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REESE  LIBRARY 

OK  THIC 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


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zAccc-ssioii  No. 


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EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS 

AND 

ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


BY 

E.   P.   EVANS 

AUTHOR  OF  ANIMAL  SYMBOLISM  IN  ECCLESIASTICAL 
ARCHITECTURE,  THE  CRIMINAL  PROSECUTION  AND 
CAPITAL   PUNISHMENT   OF   ANIMALS,    ETC.     •:•      •:• 


NEW    YORK 
APPLETON    AND    COMPANY 

1898 


t -2 


CoPYniaHT,  1897, 
By  D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY. 


yrc>,  /  6" 


^^ 


TO  MY   WIFB, 

ELIZABETH   E.  EVANS. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/evolutionalethicOOevanrich 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  PAOB 

Introduction:  Animal   psychology   as   the    foundation 
OP  animal's  rights  in  the  historical  evolution 

OF  ethics 1 


EVOLCJTIONAL  ETHICS. 

I. — The  ethics  of  tribal  society 19 

II. — Religious  belief  as  a  basis    of  moral   obliga- 
tion      53 

III. — Ethical  relations  of  man  to  beast  ....  82 

IV. — Metempsychosis 105 


ANIMAL   PSYCHOLOGY. 

y. — Mind  in  man  and  brute 165 

VI. — Progress  and  perfectibility  in  the  lower  ani- 
mals    197 

VII. — Ideation  in  animals  and  men 222 

VIII.— Speech  as  a  barrier  between  man  and  beast      .  270 
IX.— The  aesthetic  sense  and  religious  sentiment  in 

animals 333 

Bibliography 359 

Index 369 

V 


EVOLUTIONAL   ETHICS. 


INTEODUCTIOK 

ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY  AS  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  ANI- 
MALS' EIGHTS  IN  THE  HISTOKIOAL  EVOLUTION  OF 
ETHICS. 

Recent  enlargement  of  mental  science.  Close  connection  between 
evolutional  ethics  and  animal  psychology.  Modem  survivals 
of  mediaeval  metaphysics  and  anthropocentric  ethics.  "Zo-  *" 
ophily."  Personification  of  inanimate  objects  by  primitive 
peoples.  Example  from  the  Kalewala.  Observation  of  ani- 
mals by  hunters  and  herdsmen  in  early  society.  Superstitious 
fear  of  animals  and  the  rise  of  zoolatry.  Survivals  of  animal 
worship  in  the  cults  of  civilized  races.  Human  appreciation 
of  the  lower  animals  as  the  result  of  their  domestication. 
Their  position  as  members  of  the  tribe  or  family.  Their 
worth  recognised  by  primitive  legislation.  Tie  dog  in  the 
Avesta.  Zarathustra's  care  for  cattle.  Buddha's  precepts  in 
respect  to  animal  life.  The  doctrine  of  evolution  taught  by 
Greek  philosophers.  The  Ionic  school  of  naturalists.  Aris- 
totle and  Theophrastus.  Greek  speculation  from  Thales  to 
Proclus.  Celsus  and  Origen.  Advanced  views  of  Nemesius. 
His  superiority  to  St.  Aug'istire.  Thomas  Aquinas  and  the 
scholiasts.  Beasts  as  types  and  symbols  of  spiritual  truths. 
Their  equality  with  man  before  the  law.  The  principle  of 
animals'  rights  asserted  by  evolutionists  and  generally  op-  ' 
posed  by  theologians.  Lotze's  theory  of  soul  and  body.  Psy- 
chical faculties  as  affected  by  the  physical  organism.  Their 
coetaneous  development  and  peculiar  interdependence  in  the 
pithecoid  stage  of  man's  evolution.    The  starting  point  of 


2  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

humanity.  General  intelligence  in  the  simplest  organisms. 
Observations  of  Darwin  and  Romanes.  Growth  of  instincts 
analogous  to  formation  of  habits.  The  measure  of  man's  duty 
to  the  lower  animals  determined  by  the  degree  of  their  mental 
development, 

Theke  are  scarcely  any  topics  which  excite  such  gen- 
eral interest,  and  are  so  frequently  discussed  nowadays, 
as  the  origin  and  evolution  of  ethical  conceptions  as  re- 
vealed in  the  history  of  civilization,  and  the  growth  and 
development,  the  outward  manifestations  and  essential 
qualities  of  mind  in  the  lower  animals,  to  the  study  of 
which  the  most  recent  researches  in  comparative  phi- 
lology, biology,  psychology,  and  kindred  branches  of 
natural  and  mental  science  have  given  a  fresh  impulse 
and  new  direction,  and  opened  up  a  broader  and  clearer 
field  of  view. 

The  intimate  connection  between  evolutional  ethics 
and  animal  psychology  must  be  apparent  to  all  who 
carefully  consider  the  influence  necessarily  exerted  by 
a  proper  appreciation  of  animal  intelligence  upon  the 
recognition  of  man's  moral  relations  and  obligations 
to  the  creatures  with  whom  he  is  so  closely  associated, 
and  who  are  so  largely  subject  to  his  dominion.  The 
main  argument  urged  by  mediaeval  and  modern 
scholiasts  against  the  doctrine  of  the  rights  of  animals 
is  based  upon  the  assumption  that  they  are  utterly  de- 
void of  those  psychical  powers  which  constitute  per- 
sonality even  in  the  most  restricted  sense  of  this  term. 
"  Brute  beasts/'  says  the  Eev.  Joseph  Eickaby,  an  Eng- 
lish Jesuit  and  author  of  a  work  on  moral  philosophy, 
''not  having  understanding,  and,  therefore,  not  being 
persons,  can  not  have  rights.  The  conclusion  is  clear. 
They  are  not  autocentric.     They  are  of  the  number 


ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY.  3 

of  things  which,  are  another's."  He  infers  from  these 
premises  that  "we  have  no  duties  of  any  kind  to  the 
lower  animals^  as  neither  to  stocks  nor  stones '' ;  "  not 
of  justice  .  .  .  and  not  of  religion  .  .  .  not  of  fidel- 
ity ..  .  no  duties  of  charity."  *  Father  Eickahy  and 
the  Eev.  Prof.  Tyrrell  represent  a  large  class  of  dogmatic 
divines  and  helated  schoolmen,  who  postulate  an  abso- 
lute and  abysmal  chasm  between  man  and  all  other  sen- 
tient organisms,  and  found  upon  this  gratuitous  assump- 
tion a  narrow  system  of  anthropocentric  ethics  at  vari- 
ance alike  with  the  deductions  of  modern  science  and  the 
finer  feelings  of  humanity.  In  order  to  meet  on  their 
own  ground  these  followers  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  the 
*' angelic  doctor,"  whose  metaphysical  quillets  and 
quodlibets  received  the  sanction  of  the  Council  of  Trent 
and  still  rank  as  quasi-articles  of  faith  in  the  Catholic 
Church,  it  is  only  necessary  to  show  that  the  supposed 
chasm  has  no  real  existence  as  a  fixed,  final,  and  im- 
passable barrier,  and  in  the  light  of  modern  anthropo- 
logical and  psychological  research  has  resolved  itself 
into  a  wavering,  indeterminable,  and  almost  evanescent 
line  of  demarcation.  As  Miss  Cobbe  has  very  perti- 
nently remarked:  "  The  whole  subject  of  oi.r  moral  re- 
lations to  the  lower  animals  is  undoubtedly  a  most  ob- 
scure and  difficult  one.  .  .  .  Some  revision  of  the 
'Person  and  Thing'  philosophy  is,  however,  the  first 
thing  to  be  achieved;  somo  reconstruction  of  the  meta- 
physical and  ethical  systems  of  bygone  times  in  better 
accordance  with  our  present  anthropolgy  and  psycholo- 

*  Quoted  by  Frances  Power  Cobbe  in  The  Ethics  of  Zoophily, 
a  paper  published  originally  in  the  London  Contemporary  Review 
(November,  1895),  in  refutation  of  similar  views  expressed  by  the 
Rev.  George  Tyrrell,  also  a  disciple  of  Loyola. 

OB    THK  '^ 


4  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

gy.  .  .  .  The  elephant  and  the  butterfly  can  not  be 
boxed  together  nowadays,  except  in  a  child's  Noah's 
Ark.  A  Fuegian  who  eats  his  grandmother  and  can 
barely  count  his  fingers  can  not  be  pigeonholed  a  ^  Per- 
son/ and  at  the  same  time  Landseer's  dog  a  '  Thing/ 
except  in  a  mediaeval  mind,  which  has  somehow  sur- 
vived preternaturally  into  the  Darwinian  period."  (lb., 
p.  10.) 

In  tracing  the  history  of  the  evolution  of  ethics 
we  find  the  recognition  of  mutual  rights  and  duties 
confined  at  first  to  members  of  the  same  horde  or  tribe, 
then  extended  to  worshippers  of  the  same  gods,  and 
gradually  enlarged  so  as  to  include  every  civilized 
nation,  until  at  length  all  races  of  men  are  at  least 
theoretically  conceived  as  being  united  in  a  common 
bond  of  brotherhood  and  benevolent  sympathy,  which 
is  now  slowly  expanding  so  as  to  comprise  not  only 
the  higher  species  of  animals,  but  also  every  sensitive 
embodiment  of  organic  life. 

But  while  the  primitive  man  regarded  all  human 
beings  who  were  not  his  kinsmen  as  his  enemies,  his 
classification  of  the  lower  animals  in  their  relations 
to  himself  was  by  no  means  so  simple.  In  the  child- 
hood of  the  race,  as  of  the  individual,  the  imagination 
easily  spans  the  gulf  that  separates  the  animate  from 
the  inanimate,  and  attributes  consciousness  and  per- 
sonality even  to  lifeless  and  formless  objects.  A  strik- 
ing illustration  of  this  tendency,  as  it  survives  in  poetry, 
is  the  manner  in  which  Lemminkainen,  in  the  Finnic 
epos  Kalewala,  accosts  the  roadways  which  seem  to 
come  to  meet  her  as  she  goes  in  search  of  her  lost  son: 

*'  Roadways,  ye  whom  God  hath  shapen, 
Have  ye  not  my  son  beholden, 


ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY.  5 

Nowhere  seen  the  golden  apple, 
Him  my  darling  staff  of  silver  ? " 
Prudently  they  gave  her  answer, 
Thus  to  her  replied  the  Roadways : 
*'For  thy  son  we  can  not  plague  us, 
We  have  sorrows,  too,  a  many. 
Since  our  own  lot  is  a  hard  one 
And  our  fortune  is  but  evil, 
By  dogs'  feet  to  be  run  over. 
By  the  wheel-tire  to  be  wounded, 
And  by  heavy  heels  down- trampled." 

The  same  naive  and  vigorous  fancy  that  could  thus 
transform  an  ensemble  of  dust  and  clods  into  a  living, 
thinking,  and  speaking  entity  would  be  still  less  cog- 
nizant of  the  spiritual  disparity  between  man  and  beast, 
and  would  scarcely  feel  the  absence  of  the  "missing 
link/'  which  modern  anthropologists  are  making  such 
strenuous  efforts  to  discover.  The  grazing  of  flocks 
and  herds,  or  the  exciting  perils  of  the  chase,  would 
lead  to  a  close  observation  of  the  habits  and  peculiari- 
ties of  different  animals  and  give  rise  to  strange  con- 
jectures and  theories  concerning  their  relationship  to 
the  human  race,  which  in  general  qualities  they  so 
strongly  resemble,  and  in  special  senses,  such  as  sharp- 
ness of  sight,  keenness  of  scent,  quickness  of  hearing, 
and  swiftness  of  foot,  they  so  far  excel.  The  percep- 
tion of  these  manifold  capacities  would  suggest  and 
enforce  the  recognition  of  an  analogue  of  the  soul 
underlying  and  controlling  this  complex  of  thoughts, 
feelings,  impulses,  and  passions.  Metaphysics  had  not 
yet  woven  its  intricate  raddle  hedge  of  verbal  defini- 
tions round  the  provinces  of  reason  and  instinct;  the 
boundaries  of  the  two  spiritual  realms  were  not  so  fixed, 
nor  the  distinctions  so  radical  but  that  transitions  from 


6  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

one  state  to  the  other  were  accepted  as  possible  and 
even  ordinary  occurrences.  Hence  the  popular  belief 
in  werewolves  and  other  metamorphoses  of  men  into 
beasts  and  beasts  into  men,  which  prevails  in  the 
primitive  history,  and  survives  among  the  lower  classes 
of  all  nations,  and  plays  so  prominent  a  part  in  fairy 
tales  and  folklore,  and  forms  the  basis  of  the  wonder- 
ful doctrine  of  metempsychosis. 

''  Hence,  too,  arose  a  vague  superstitious  fear  of  the 
lower  animals,  not  merely  on  account  of  their  superior 
physical  strength  and  natural  ferocity,  but  also  as  em- 
bodiments of  mysterious  powers,  and  especially  as  re- 
incarnations of  deceased  chieftains  and  warriors.  This 
feeling  is  the  source  of  totemism  and  the  worship  of 
deified  ancestors  in  the  forms  of  beasts  and  birds  and 
even  reptiles,  which  is  probably  the  basis  of  all  zoolatry. 
Survivals  of  this  primitive  cult  are  found  in  the  my- 
thologies of  the  most  highly  cultivated  peoples,  as,  for 
example,  in  the  eagle  of  Jupiter,  the  owl  of  Minerva, 
and  the  serpent  of  ^sculapius,  where  the  animal,  that 
was  originally  the  real  object  of  adoration,  has  become, 
in  the  evolution  of  religious  ideas,  simply  the  emblem 
of  an  anthropomorphic  deity.  Even  Christianity,  with 
all  its  spiritual  aims  and  aspirations,  shows  distinct 
vestiges  of  zoolatrous  worship  in  the  conception  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  as  a  dove,  of  Christ  as  a  lamb,  of  Satan  as 
a  dragon  or  a  serpent,  in  the  symbolism  of  the  fish 
and  lion,  in  the  monsters  of  the  Apocalypse,  and  the 
attributes  of  the  evangelists  borrowed  from  the  vision 

,  of  the  prophet  Ezekiel. 

In  this  connection,  however,  our  chief  concern  is 
not  in  the  psychological  explanation  and  historical 
evolution  of  zoolatry,  but  in  its  ethical  influence  as  af- 


ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY.  ^ 

fecting  man's  treatment  of  the  lower  animals.     The 
law  of  enmity  is  older  and  more  universal  than  that  of 
friendship.    The  earliest  and  strongest  emotion  in  the 
breast  of  the  savage  is  that  of  hatred  and  hostility  to!  ( 
other  men,  as  well  as  to  all  beasts  of  the  field  and  of  I 
the  forest.     Indeed  he  makes   no   moral   distinction 
between  them,  but  regards  them  indiscriminately  as 
foes,  whom  it  is  his  imperative  duty  to  destroy.    If  he 
recognises  their  superiority,  he  tries  to  flee  from  them 
or  seeks  to  avert  their  wrath  and  win  their  favour  by 
reverential  submission  and  propitiation.      In  no  case 
are  they  to  him  objects  of  affection;  if  he  flatters  them, 
it  is  not  fondness  but  fear  that  is  the  motive  of  his 
conduct.    The  element  of  love  does  not  enter  into  the  i  ^ 
religion  of  the  primitive  man,  who  adores  and  appeases  |  . 
by  offerings  and  adulation  only  the  beings  he  dreads. 

The  first  feeling  of  genuine  human  sympathy  with 
the  lower  animals  grew  out  of  their  subjection  and 
domestication,  whereby  they,  like  captives  of  war,  were 
recognised  as  members  of  the  family  or  tribe  with  which 
they  were  united  by  ties,  not  of  actual  affinity,  but  of 
adoption  and  common  interest.  They  wero  reared  and 
cherished  because  they  contributed  to  the  comfort  and 
general  welfare  of  the  community,  and  this  association 
during  successive  generations  gradually  led  to  the 
growth  of  permanent  and  traditional  sentiments  of 
kindness  and  benevolence  toward  them,  and  a  natural 
desire  to  promote  their  happiness.  The  Sanskrit  word 
for  cattle  (pasu)  signified  a  creature  "  bound  "  to  serv- 
ice, whether  men,  kine,  horses,  goats,  or  sheep,  and  the 
Roman  familia  included  both  domestic  animals  and 
slaves.  The  transition  from  the  life  of  hunters  to  that 
of  herdsmen,  and  finally  from  these  nomadic  stages  to 


8  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

that  of  sedentary  tillers  of  the  soil,  resulted  in  a  more 
intimate  knowledge  and  higher  appreciation  of  the 
lower  animals  and  a  clearer  conception  of  their  mental 
and  moral  qualities.  Man  began  to  discover  in  them 
not  only  a  remarkable  capacity  to  understand  him, 
but  also  a  readiness  and  eagerness  to  execute  his  com- 
mands. This  was  especially  true  of  his  most  faithful 
friend  and  constant  companion,  the  dog,  for  whose 
proper  nurture,  protection,  and  kind  treatment  the 
sacred  books  of  the  ancient  Persians  contain  the  strict- 
est injunctions  with  the  severest  penalties  for  their 
violation.  These  prescriptions,  as  well  as  those  en- 
joining considerate  care  and  compassion  for  cattle  of 
every  kind,  although  proclaimed  as  a  revelation  of  the 
Good  Mind  (Yohu-mano)  and  embodied  by  Zara- 
thustra  in  the  Iranian  religion,  in  order  to  invest  them 
with  supreme  authority,  were  really  based  upon  a  per- 
ception of  the  intrinsic  worth  of  the  creatures  them- 
selves and  their  usefulness  to  man.  This  is  evident 
from  the  distinction  made  between  beneficent  and 
baneful  creatures,  the  latter  being  products  and  agents 
of  the  Evil  Mind  (Akem-mano  emanating  from  the 
Hurtful  Spirit  Angro-mainyush),  which  it  is  the  sacred 
duty  of  the  worshippers  of  the  Living  God  (Ahura- 
mazda,  the  personification  of  the  Bountiful  Spirit 
Spento-mainyush)  to  exterminate.  This  dualism  of  god 
and  devil  is  practically  applied  in  the  story  of  creation 
as  recorded  in  the  first  fargard  of  the  Vendidad,  and 
furnishes  the  foundation  of  the  most  reasonable  and 
equitable  system  of  animal  ethics  developed  by  any 
Oriental  people.  Buddha  forbade  his  followers  to  kill 
any  animal  whatsoever,  and  this  absolute  prohibition 
in    the    countries    in   which    Buddhism    prevails    and 


ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY.  9 

ravenous  beasts  and  poisonous  reptiles  abound,  if  con- 
scientiously observed,  would  necessarily  prove  highly 
detrimental  to  the  human  inhabitants.  But  religious 
precepts,  arbitrarily  imposed,  do  not  always  suffice  to 
curb  the  brutal  instincts  of  the  natural  man,  and  the 
torture  of  animals,  unwittingly  through  ignorance  or 
wilfully  through  malice,  is  not  unknown  even  in  Bud- 
dhistic lands.  In  this,  as  in  every  department  of  ethics, 
the  conduct  of  the  individual  depends  upon  the  degree 
of  his  mental  enlightenment  and  moral  development, 
and  is  influenced  by  the  religious  creed  he  happens  to 
profess  only  so  far  as  the  latter  may  incidentally 
modify  his  personal  character.  As  a  rule,  its  effect 
in  restraining  inborn  propensities  is  very  slight,  espe- 
cially when  the  religion  is  handed  down  from  genera- 
tion to  generation  as  a  sacred  heirloom  of  the  race  and 
the  performance  of  the  duties  it  inculcates  becomes 
perfunctory. 

The  metaphysical  principle  underlying  this  tender 
regard  for  all  sentient  organisms  taught  by  Brahmans 
and  Buddhists  is  the  coessentiality  of  men  and  ani- 
mals, from  which  the  doctrine  of  metemosychosis  is 
logically  deduced.  Many  of  the  early  Greek  philoso- 
phers entertained  the  same  theory,  which  was  first  fully 
developed  by  the  Ionic  school  of  naturalists  and  physi- 
ologists, one  of  whom,  Anaximander,  held  the  idea  of 
evolution  and  even  asserted  the  descent  of  man  from 
the  lower  animals.  It  formed  also  the  cosmo-theo- 
logical  basis  of  a  system  of  animal  ethics,  most  clearly 
and  completely  formulated,  perhaps,  in  the  writings  of 
Aristotle's  celebrated  pupil  Theophrastus.  In  fact,  it 
pervades  all  Greek  speculation  for  more  than  ten  centu- 
ries, from  Thales  to  Proclus,  and  is  strongly  emphasized 


10  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

by  Plutarch,  Plotinus,  and  Porphyrius,  and  other  repre- 
sentatives of  Neoplatonism  and  Neopythagoreanism, 
who  made  a  practical  application  of  it  in  urging  absti- 
nence from  the  use  of  flesh  as  an  article  of  food.  In- 
deed, this  psychical  homogeneity  was  so  generally  ac- 
cepted by  leading  thinkers  in  the  first  and  second  centu- 
ries of  our  era  as  an  unquestionable  and  quite  axiomatic 
truth  that  the  eclectic  philosopher  Celsus  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  adduce  the  denial  of  it  as  one  of  his  most  serious 
charges  against  Christianity.  In  replying  to  this  acute 
and  subtile,  though  rather  superficial  pagan  polemic, 
Origen  admits  the  correctness  of  the  accusation,  but  is 
not  at  all  disturbed  by  it;  on  the  contrary,  he  main- 
tains that  the  anthropocentric  standpoint  of  Chris- 
.  tianity  is  impregnable.  All  things,  he  declares,  includ- 
ing animals,  were  created  for  man;  the  harmless  ones 
being  designed  to  be  subjected  to  his  will  in  order  that 
they  may  minister  to  his  convenience  and  comfort, 
while  the  hurtful  ones  contribute  to  the  development 
of  his  thinking  faculties  and  his  sensibilities.  How 
these  latter  effects  are  produced  it  is  difficult  to  under- 
stand, unless  it  be  by  sharpening  his  wits  in  the  strug- 
gle for  existence  against  noxious  creatures  and  by  cul- 
tivating at  the  same  time  his  patience  and  powers  of 
endurance.  So  far  as  the  animals  themselves  are  con- 
cerned, Origen  affirms  that  they  have  neither  under- 
!  standing  nor  will,  but  are  mere  mechanisms  skilfully 
constructed  and  kept  in  operation  by  the  hand  of  God 
working  through  "all-mother  Nature.''  This  was  the 
theory  held  by  nearly  all  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  and 
early  Christian  theologians,  about  the  only  notable 
exception  being  Nemesius,  who  was  Bishop  of  Emesa 
in  Syria  during  the  latter  half  of  the  fourth  century, 


ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY.  H 

and  who  seems  to  have  believed  with  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson  that 

A  subtle  chain  of  countless  rings 
The  next  unto  the  farthest  brings ; 

And,  striving  to  be  man,  the  worm 
Mounts  through  all  the  spires  of  form. 

In  other  words,  this  remarkably  clear-minded  and 
sharp-sighted  ecclesiastic,  in  his  work  on  The  Nature 
of  Man  (irepl  (j)vaeco<;  avS-pwirov),  appears  to  have 
discovered  the  principle  of  organic  evolution  fifteen 
centuries  before  Darwin  made  it  the  keystone  of  mod- 
ern science,  just  as  he  anticipated  Harvey  by  nearly 
thirteen  centuries  in  describing  the  action  of  the  heart 
and  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  and  left  on  record  some 
striking  observations  as  regards  the  functions  of  the 
liver  and  the  bile.  He  also  maintained,  in  opposition 
to  the  current  superstition  of  his  day,  that  insanity  is 
due  to  brain  disease  and  not  to  demoniacal  possession. 

Nemesius,  however,  was  endowed  with  a  degree  of 
insight  and  intelligence  rare  among  his  com  emporaries 
and  seldom  shown  even  by  the  most  enlightened  of  his 
coreligionists,  among  whom  St.  Augustine  holds  the 
first  rank,  not  owing  to  superior  learning,  but  on  ac- 
count of  his  uncommon  intellectual  acuteness,  winning 
personality,  and  fiery  zeal.  As  the  chief  exponent  of 
the  doctrine  of  predestination,  the  Bishop  of  Hippo 
robbed  man  of  free  agency  and  rendered  him  the 
wretched  victim  of  divine  decrees;  but  this  affected  only 
his  relation  to  God  and  his  eternal  destiny,  and  did  not 
diminish  his  dominion  over  "  every  living  thing  that 
moveth  upon  the  earth  "  ;  an  authority  which  patristic 


12  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

theologians,  and  especially  mediaeval  scholiasts,  with 
Thomas  Aquinas  at  their  head,  claimed  to  be  absolute 
and  unrestrained  by  any  recognition  of  rights  or  even 
sense  of  moral  obligation  on  the  part  of  man,  except 
such  humaneness  and  general  benevolence  as  might 
spring  from  the  vague  and  variable  conception  of  his 
own  worthiness. 

Christian  theologians  and  exegetists  began  also  at  a 
very  early  period  to  use  the  real  or  fabulous  charac- 
teristics of  animals  for  the  illustration  and  enforce- 
ment of  religious  dogmas  and  moral  duties.  In  this 
way  it  was  possible  to  reconcile  the  existence  of  raven- 
ous beasts  and  venomous  reptiles  with  the  omnipotence 
and  beneficence  of  the  Creator  and  Euler  of  the  world, 
since  they  were  designed  to  serve  as  types  and  symbols 
of  spiritual  truths,  and  therefore  held  an  important 
place  in  the  system  of  redemption  and  consequently 
in  the  economy  of  the  universe.*  Still  more  interesting 
and  inexplicable  from  a  psychological  point  of  view  is 
the  fact  that  not  only  rude  tribes,  but  also  highly  civi- 
lized pagan  and  Christian  nations  have  treated  animals, 
otherwise  deemed  irrational,  as  though  they  were  re- 
sponsible for  their  actions,  by  placing  them  on  a  footing 
of  equality  with  human  beings  as  malefactors.  Accord- 
ing to  the  Mosaic  law,  an  ox  that  gored  a  man  or  woman 
that  they  die  was  stoned,  and  this  enactment  has  been 
often  cited  as  a  precedent  by  Christian  tribunals  in 
mediaeval  and  even  modern  times  in  order  to  justify  the 
execution  of  homicidal  beasts.  In  Montenegro  and  other 
countries  of  eastern  Europe  horses,  pigs,  and  horned  cat- 

*  This  subject  has  been  fully  treated  in  the  author's  Animal 
Symbolism  in  Ecclesiastical  Architecture,  published  by  William 
Heineraann  in  London  and  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  in  New  York. 


ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY.  13 

tie  have  been  tried  for  murder  and  condemned  to  death 
by  criminal  courts  within  the  last  half  century.  The 
highest  ecclesiastical  authorities  have  deigned  to  put 
the  meanest  vermin  under  ban,  and  not  deemed  it 
derogatory  to  their  dignity  to  hold  the  terrors  of  ex- 
communication over  pernicious  and  disobedient  locusts 
and  slugs  and  vine-fretters.*  This  treatment  of  the 
lower  animals  would  necessarily  imply  that  their  actions 
were  regarded  as  justiciable,  and  that  they  stood  in  cer- 
tain legal  and  therefore  moral  relations  to  mankind; 
for  all  law  is  ultimately  based  upon  a  more  or  less  im- 
perfect recognition  of  ethical  principles,  of  which  it 
aims  to  be  the  statutory  expression. 

But  if  animals  may  be  rendered  liable  to  judicial 
punishment  for  injuries  done  to  man,  one  would  natu- 
rally infer  that  they  should  also  enjoy  legal  protection 
against  human  cruelty.  It  was  a  long  time,  however, 
before  even  the  most  enlightened  nations  reached  this 
conclusion  and  began  to  form  societies  for  its  enforce- 
ment, and  to  give  it  practical  efficiency  by  legislative 
enactments.  It  was  in  1780  that  Jeremy  Bentham, 
in  his  Introduction  to  the  Principles  of  Morals  and 
Legislation  and  Principles  of  Penal  Law,  urged  the 
duty  of  recognising  and  maintaining  the  rights  of  ani- 
n^als  and  asked,  "Why  should  the  law  refuse  its  pro- 
tection to  any  sensitive  being?  The  time  will  come," 
he  added,  "  when  humanity  will  extend  its  mantle  over 
everything  which  breathes.  "We  have  begun  by  attend- 
ing to  the  condition  of  slaves;  we  shall  finish  by  soften- 

*  For  authentic  accounts  of  such  proceedings,  see  the  author's 
work  on  The  Criminal  Prosecution  and  Capital  Punishment  of 
Animals,  published  by  William  Heinemann  in  London  and  Henry 
Holt  &  Co.  in  New  York. 


14  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

ing  that  of  all  animals  which  assist  our  labours  or  sup- 
ply our  wants."  The  ethical  corollaries  to  Darwin's 
doctrine  of  the  origin  of  species  and  to  his  theory  of 
development  through  descent  under  the  modifying  in- 
fluences of  environment  and  natural  selection  have 
already  passed  these  bounds  of  beneficence  not  only  by 
demanding  the  mitigation  of  cruelty  to  slaves,  but  also 
by  the  abolition  of  slavery,  and  not  only  by  inculcating 
the  kind  treatment  of  animals  by  individuals,  but  also 
by  asserting  the  principle  of  animals'  rights  and  the 
necessity  of  vindicating  them  by  imposing  judicial  pun- 
ishments for  their  violation.  Penal  laws  having  this 
object  in  view,  but  at  first  confined  to  the  protection 
of  neat  cattle,  were  enacted  in  England  as  early  as 
1822;  a  little  later  they  were  made  to  include  all  do- 
mestic animals,  and  have  been  now  greatly  enlarged 
and  adopted  by  nearly  all  civilized  nations. 

Only  in  countries  like  Spain,  which  are  still  gov- 
erned by  the  antiquated  metaphysical  teachings  and 
narrow  moral  theories  of  a  mediaeval  hierarchy,  has  the 
jus  animalium  as  yet  found  no  place  in  codes  of  ethics 
or  systems  of  jurisprudence.  Even  in  Protestant  lands, 
notwithstanding  the  distinctively  humanitarian  tenden- 
cies of  the  revival  of  learning  and  the  reformation  of 
religion  in  the  sixteenth  century,  the  clergy  as  a  body 
has  opposed  every  attempt  to  vindicate  the  rights  of  ani- 
mals on  scientific  and  zoopsychological  grounds  as  con- 
trary to  the  teaching  of  Scripture.  The  German  theo- 
logian Hettinger,  in  his  Apology  for  Christianity,  does 
not  hesitate  to  denounce  all  such  efforts  to  restrict 
the  tyranny  of  man  over  the  brute  creation  as  the 
"  ogling  of  materialists  with  beasts, '  which  they  seek 
to  elevate  merely  for  the  purpose  of  degrading  hu- 


ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY.  15 

manity."  '  No  accusation  could  be  more  absurd;  a  cor- 
rect conception  of  the  origin  and  evolution  of  man 
and  his  kinship  with  the  lower  forms  of  life  is  essential 
to  the  proper  appreciation  of  his  dignity  and  destiny, 
and  the  full  comprehension  of  his  peculiar  place  in 
Nature.  In  this  process  of  development  it  is  impos- 
sible to  separate  psychical  forces  from  ph3^sical  factors, 
and  to  determine  how  far  the  faculties  of  the  soul  are 
dependent  for  their  existence  and  exercise  upon  the 
structure  of  the  body,  inasmuch  as  we  have  no  knowl- 
edge of  the  former  except  in  organic  association  with 
the  latter.  According  to  the  Neoherbartian  philoso- 
pher Hermann  Lotze,  "all  souls,  considered  as  purely 
spiritual  entities,  are  perfectly  congenious  or  like- 
natured  in  perception,  emotion,  and  will;  but  if  the 
soul  is  incarnated  in  the  body  of  an  ape,  it  becomes  an 
ape-soul,  while  in  the  body  of  a  man  it  becomes  a  man- 
soul  and  mounts  up  to  humanity.  Souls  are  not  dif- 
ferent in  themselves,  but  only  in  the  degree  of  their 
development,  and  this  depends  upon  the  sum  of  the 
combined  and  varied  excitations,  which  are  conveyed 
to  them.  The  more  completely  endowed  and  mani- 
foldly equipped  is  the  physical  organism,  the  more 
perfect  will  be  the  soul,  and  this  different  grade  of 
perfection  constitutes  the  specific  difference  of  the 
soul."  This  statement  would  seem  to  imply  the  creation 
and  arbitrary  distribution  of  souls,  the  exhibition  of 
whose  powers  is  dependent  upon  the  physical  condi- 
tions in  which  they  chance  to  be  placed.  It  would  be 
more  correct  to  assume  that  the  soul  gradually  creates 
these  conditions  and  produces  a  vehicle  more  highly 
organized,  and  therefore  better  suited  to  give  line  and 
scope  to  its  full  and  free  activity  by  diminishing  the. 


16  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

number  and  force  of  the  predispositions  and  prede- 
terminations, to  which  the  nervous  system  of  the  lower 
animals  is  subjected.  The  immense  intellectual  dis- 
parity between  a  man  of  genius  and  a  catarrhine  ape 
is  due  to  the  accumulation  of  anatomical  variations, 
80  slight  in  their  beginnings  as  to  be  hardly  percep- 
tible. This  is  especially  true  of  the  brain  as  the  cen- 
tral organ  of  the  nervous  system,  the  increase  of  the 
surface  of  wliich  through  the  multiplication  of  the  folds 
and  the  deepening  of  the  furrows  marks  the  growth  of  in- 
telligence and  measures  the  increase  of  mental  capacity. 
Other  physical  changes  contribute  to  the  same  result: 
the  assumption  of  an  erect  posture  through  the 
straightening  of  the  legs  and  the  formation  of  the  firm, 
but  elastic  arch  of  the  foot,  thereby  giving  greater 
freedom  of  movement  to  the  head  and  also  to  the  hands 
as  organs  devoted  exclusively  to  tact  and  prehension; 
the  wider  range  and  finer  discrimination  of  the  senses 
of  sight,  hearing,  taste,  and  smell;  and  the  superior 
flexibility  of  the  glottis  essential  to  articulate  speech, 
all  of  which  enable  man  to  attain  a  more  complete 
and  exact  knowledge — first,  of  his  own  body  and  sec- 
ondly of  the  outer  world — ^than  it  is  possible  for  any 
lower  animal  to  acquire. 

But  it  would  be  wholly  foreign  to  the  purpose  of 
this  introduction  to  discuss  the  origin  and  nature  of 
spiritual  endowments,  and  the  extent  of  their  causal 
connection  or  correlation  with  physical  characteristics; 
it  suffices  to  show  that  the  development  of  the  former 
proceeds  pari  pasu  with  the  development  of  the  latter. 
In  the  primitive  or  pithecoid  stage  of  humanity  pre- 
hension was  undoubtedly  a  more  valuable  and  indis- 
pensable aid  to  comprehension  than  it  is  to-day;   and 


ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY.  17 

the  synonymy  of  a  thin  skin  with  a  sensitive  soul  is  the 
metaphorical  survival  of  the  actual  workings  of  cause 
and  effect  in  the  earliest  history  of  the  race.  But 
whatever  may  be  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  inter- 
dependence between  these  physical  and  psychical  ele- 
ments, the  development  is  everywhere  a  continuous 
one,  with  no  break  in  the  series  of  countless  concatena- 
tions and  marvellous  adaptations  of  means  to  ends, 
by  which  the  grand  result  is  attained.  The  turning 
point  in  this  endless  and  uninterrupted  process  of  evo- 
lution, the  point  at  which  the  beast  ceases  and  the 
man  begins,  is  where  the  soul  is  no  longer  the  me- 
nial, but  asserts  its  supremacy  as  the  master  of  the 
body. 

Eesearches  in  comparative  psychology,  taken  in  its 
widest  sense  as  comprizing  mental  processes  in  the  lower 
animals  as  well  as  in  the  lowest  races  of  mankind,  prove 
conclusively  that  even  the  simplest  organisms  are  en- 
dowed with  a  certain  degree  of  consciousness  and  so- 
called  "general  intelligence,"  as  is  evident  from  the 
analogy  of  their  actions  with  those  of  human  beings. 
Darwin  afl&rms  that  "  even  the  headless  oyster  seems 
to  profit  by  experience,"  and  Eomanes  midntains  that 
the  movements  of  an  animalcule  like  the  amoeba  in- 
dicate an  intentional  adaptation  of  means  to  ends;  but 
the  exercise  of  this  power  implies  rationality  as  distin- 
guished from  that  unconscious  and  involuntary  im- 
pulse to  action  known  as  instinct.  That  the  trans- 
formation of  actions  implying  free  intelligence  into 
instinctive  actions  resulting  in  hereditary  tendencies  is 
constantly  going  on,  and  plays  an  important  part  even 
in  the  earliest  stages  of  psychical  evolution,  there  can 
be  no  question.    In  this  respect  the  growth  of  instincts 


18  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

in  the  lower  animals  is  analogous  to  the  formation  of 
habits  in  man. 

This  subject,  however,  has  been  so  fully  treated 
in  the  second  part  of  the  present  volume  that  it  is 
hardly  necessary  to  make  further  reference  to  it  here, 
except  to  point  out  its  moral  bearings.  The  measure 
of  our  duty  towards  lower  organisms  is  determined  by 
the  degree  of  their  mental  development,  or,  as  the 
German  philosopher  Krause  has  expressed  it,  "  every 
creature  endowed  with  a  soul  is  also  endowed  with 
rights."  The  only  firm  foundation  of  animal  ethics 
is  animal  psychology.  It  is  through  the  portal  of 
spiritual  kinship,  erected  by  modern  evolutional  sci- 
ence, that  beasts  and  birds,  "  our  elder  brothers,"  as 
Herder  calls  them,  enter  into  the  temple  of  justice 
and  enjoy  the  privilege  of  sanctuary  against  the  wanton 
or  unwitting  cruelty  hitherto  authorized  by  the  as- 
sumptions and  usurpations  of  man. 

It  may  be  stated,  in  conclusion,  that  the  contents  of 
the  present  volume  consist  chiefly  of  articles  which  were 
originally  printed  in  The  Popular  Science  Monthly,  The 
Atlantic  Monthly,  and  The  IJnitarian  Eeview,  and 
which,  after  having  been  thoroughly  revised  and  consid- 
erably expanded,  are  now  offered  to  the  public  in  a 
more  convenient  and  more  permanent  form.  A  bibli- 
ography is  appended,  embracing  the  principal  sources  of 
information,  and  including  also  a  number  of  works  op- 
posed to  the  author's  views.  The  reader  is  thus  aided 
in  extending  his  studies,  and  by  acquainting  himself  with 
the  results  of  the  latest  researches  enabled  to  form  an 
independent  judgment. 


I. 

EVOLUTIONAL  ETELCS, 


CHAPTEE  I. 


THE   ETHICS   OF   TEIBAL   SOCIETY. 

Limitations  of  the  world  of  the  primitive  man.  Relativity  of  geo- 
graphical ideas.  Survival  of  these  conceptions  in  language. 
Ethnocentric  ethics.  The  brotherhood  of  blood.  Lactantius's 
theory  of  duty  compared  with  the  cosmopolitanism  of  Menan- 
der,  Cicero,  and  Marcus  Aurelius.  General  outlawry  of  aliens 
mitigated  by  the  sacredness  of  hospitality.  Spartan  distrust 
and  hatred  of  strangers.  Tokens  and  tallies  of  friendship 
among  Greeks  and  Romans.  Supposititious  kinship  of  tribal 
chiefs  as  a  second  stage  in  the  growing  conception  of  human 
brotherhood.  Outcroppings  of  tribal  ethics  in  the  lower  strata 
of  civilized  society.  Clannish  perversion  of  justice  in  Swit- 
zerland. Traces  of  this  spirit  in  ancient  French  and  German 
legislation.  Old  English  alien  laws  a  relic  of  savagery.  Grad- 
ual recognition  of  the  rights  of  foreigners  in  modern  states. 
Insularisra  in  British  treaties  of  extradition.  The  tribe  older 
than  the  family  as  shown  by  the  social  organization  of  anthro- 
poid apes.  Transition  from  nomadic  to  sedentary  life.  In- 
fluence of  woman  in  effectinf^  this  change.  Dwarfs  and  crip- 
ples as  inventors.  Why  artificers  in  mythology  are  lame. 
Remarks  of  Mr.  Maine  on  the  supersession  of  tribal  by  terri- 
torial sovereignty.  The  Indo- Aryan  as  a  "  nigger."  Weak- 
ness of  race  feeling  in  the  United  States.  Strongest  mani- 
festations of  it  in  the  least  cultivated  portions  of  the  country, 
toward  the  negroes  in  the  South  and  Chinese  in  the  West. 
The  right  of  voluntary  expatriation.  Appeals  to  ethnic  an- 
19 


20  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

tipathies  for  political  purposes :  Latin  Union,  Panslavism, 
Panteutonism,  and  Anti-Semitism.  Marriage  of  kin  among 
the  ancient  Persians  and  Hebrews.  Long  survival  of  it  as  the 
sacred  privilege  of  priests  and  kings. 

The  world  of  the  primitive  man  was  bounded  by 
the  circle  of  his  vision.  He  regarded  the  horizon  as 
a  fixed  line  which  separated  the  earth  from  the  sky, 
and  which  it  would  be  possible  for  him  to  reach  by 
going  far  enough.  He  did  not  deem  it  less  real  because 
it  unfortunately  always  eluded  his  search,  like  the 
fabulous  pot  of  gold  which,  according  to  popular  su- 
perstition, lies  buried  at  the  point  where  the  rainbow 
rests  on  the  ground.  In  like  manner  the  barbarian  of 
to-day  has  no  conception  of  the  fact  that  the  line  of 
junction  of  earth  and.  sky  has  no  real  existence,  but. 
is  "  all  in  his  eye." 

Indeed,  it  is  but  recently  that  man  has  learned  to 
appreciate  aright  the  wholly  subjective  character  and 
significance  of  the  terms  north,  south,  east,  and  west 
as  applied  to  places  on  the  globe,  and  to  recognise  the 
relativity  of  all  his  geographical  ideas,  inasmuch  as 
these  are  dependent  for  their  accuracy  and  exactness 
upon  the  position  of  the  speaker.  It  is  one  of  the  rare 
achievements  of  high  culture,  and  has  always  been 
the  prerogative  of  exceptionally  thoughtful  minds,  to 
be  able  to  distinguish  between  the  apparent  and  the 
actual,  to  keep  mental  conceptions  free  from  the  in- 
fluences of  optical  illusions,  and  not  to  be  deceived 
by  the  surprises  and  sophistries  of  the  senses. 

An  old  English  legend  entitled  The  Lyfe  of  Adam, 
which  has  been  preserved  in  a  manuscript  of  the  four- 
teenth century,  relates  how  "  Adam  was  made  of  oure 
lord  god  in  the  place  that  Jhesus  was  borne  in,  that 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  21 

is  to  seye  in  the  cite  of  Bethleem,  which  is  the  myddel 
of  the  erthe."  It  then  goes  on  to  state  that  the  first 
man  was  made  out  of  dust  taken  from  the  four  corners 
of  the  earth,  which  meet  in  Bethlehem,  and  that  he  was 
called  by  a  name  composed  of  the  four  principal  planets: 
thus  he  was  formed  as  a  microcosm,  the  miniature 
counterpart  and  organic  epitome  of  the  universe,  the 
synopsis  and  symbol  of  all  created  things. 

There  is  a  tendency  in  every  savage  tribe  and  iso- 
lated people  to  regard  the  portion  of  the  earth  which 
it  happens  to  inhabit,  and  especially  the  spot  which  is 
the  cradle  of  the  race  or  around  which  its  sacred 
traditions  cluster,  as  not  only  the  political  and  religious 
but  also  as  the  physical  center  of  the  world.  Such 
were  Jerusalem  to  the  Jews  and  imperial  and  papal 
Rome,  urhs  et  orhis,  to  the  ancient  Romans  and  medi- 
a3val  Romanists;  such  has  Benares  been  from  time 
immemorial  to  multitudes  of  Hindus,  and  such  is 
Mecca  to-day  to  millions  of  Moslems.  Before  the  dis- 
coveries of  the  Western  hemisphere,  made  by  Colum- 
bus and  his  compeers,  not  even  the  most  enlightened 
peoples  had  any  proper  sense  of  their  relations  to  the 
rest  of  mankind,  either  morally  or  geographically. 
International  ethics  and  comities  began  with  the  growth 
of  clearer  and  more  correct  ethnical  notions,  and  have 
always  kept  pace  with  it.  The  knowledge  of  the  ro- 
tundity of  the  earth  gave  a  strong  and  permanent  im- 
pulse in  this  direction,  and  has  contributed  not  a  little 
to  the  recognition  of  the  equal  rights  of  all  races  of 
mankind. 

The  language  of  every  civilized  nation  contains 
curious  survivals  of  the  primitive  conceptions  which 
sprung  out  of  what  might  be  called  the  self-conceited 


22  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

and  self-centered  spirit  of  the  savage.  It  is  interest- 
ing to  note  how  a  single  people,  emerging  from  barba- 
rism and  taking  the  lead  in  civilization  at  an  early 
period,  imposes  its  forms  of  speech,  and  especially  its 
geographical  terms,  upon  after  ages  and  upon  remote 
races  of  men  for  whom  they  have  really  no  meaning. 
We  still  speak  of  certain  countries  as  the  Levant  and 
the  Orient,  the  AvaToKrf  of  the  Greeks,  but  these  desig- 
nations have  no  significance  except  for  the  dwellers 
on  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  with  whom  they 
originated.  So,  too,  Asia  means  etymologically  the 
land  of  the  rising  sun  and  Europe  the  land  of  the  set- 
ting sun,  and  these  names  expressed  the  actual  posi- 
tion of  the  two  continents  in  their  relation  to  the 
Greeks.  But  to  an  American,  and  especially  to  a  Cali- 
fornian,  Europe  is  an  Eastern  and  Asia  a  Western  con- 
tinent, and  these  strictly  ethnocentric  appellations 
would  be  wholly  unsuitable  and  extremely  confusing 
were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  their  etymology  has  become 
obscured  and  their  primitive  signification  been  forgot- 
ten, or  is  at  least  lost  sight  of  and  ignored,  so  that  they 
are  now  mere  arbitrary  terms  or  distinguishing  signs, 
with  no  suggestion  of  the  geographical  direction  or 
situation  of  the  regions  to  which  they  are  applied, 
just  as  we  speak  of  Chester,  Edinburgh,  Oxford,  Ber- 
lin, or  Munich  without  thinking  of  a  Eoman  camp. 
King  Edwin's  castle,  a  ford  for  oxen,  a  frontier  fortress, 
or  a  community  of  monks;  and  christen  a  child  George, 
Albert,  or  Alexander  without  intending  him  to  be  a 
tiller  of  the  soil,  or  wishing  to  imply  that  he  is  of 
noble  birth,  or  will  distinguish  himself  as  a  defender 
of  men.  All  such  proper  names  denote  particular 
places  or  persons,  but  have  wholly  ceased  to  connote. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  23 

as  the  scholastic  philosophers  were  wont  to  say,  the 
qualities  or  attributes  which  were  at  first  associated 
with  them  and  brought  them  into  use. 

The  Chinese  call  their  country  the  middle  realm 
(Chung-lcue)  or  the  flower  of  the  middle  (Chang-Jiua), 
thus  characterizing  it  as  the  central  and  choicest  por- 
tion of  the  earth,  in  distinction  from  the  savage  wastes 
inhabited  by  savage  men  outside  of  the  Great  Wall 
{Wan-li-ch'ang-ch'ing).  The  Jews  looked  upon  them- 
selves as  the  chosen  people,  set  apart  as  Yisrdel,  or 
champions  of  the  true  God,  and  lumped  all  other  tribes 
of  men  together  as  go'im,  gentiles,  poor  pagan  folks, 
-who  had  no  rights  which  a  child  of  Abraham  was 
bound  to  respect.  The  Greeks  divided  all  mankind 
into  two  classes,  Hellenes  and  barbarians;  the  latter 
were  also  called  dykarroL — ^i.  e.,  tongueless — ^because 
they  did  not  speak  Greek.  Aristophanes  applied  the 
term  ^apjSapot,  even  to  birds,  on  account  of  the  inar- 
ticulateness and  unintelligibleness  of  their  chirpings 
and  chatterings.  It  is  from  Greek  usage  that  we  have 
come  to  designate  any  corruption  of  our  own  language 
by  the  introduction  of  foreign  or  unfi:  words  as  a 
barbarism.  The  persistence  of  this  primitive  tribal  con- 
ceit is  shown  by  the  fact  that  a  people  in  many  respects 
so  cosmopolitan  as  the  English  can  pronounce  no  severer 
censure  and  condemnation  of  the  manners,  customs, 
and  opinions  of  other  nations  than  to  call  them  un- 
English,  and  really  fancy  that  an  indelible  stigma  at- 
taches itself  to  this  epithet.  Not  long  since  several 
British  tourists  in  Italy  actually  protested  against  some 
foolish,  perhaps,  but  otherwise  harmless  features  of  the 
Roman  carnival,  and  demanded  their  suppression  on  the 
ground  that  they  were  "thoroughly  un-English,"  thus  vir- 


24:  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

tually  assuming  that  no  amusements  should  be  tolerated 
on  the  Tiber  which  were  not  customary  on  the  Thames. 
It  is  due  to  the  same  feeling  that  the  word  "  outland- 
ish "  has  gradually  grown  obsolete  in  its  original  sense, 
and  is  now  used  exclusively  as  an  expression  of  con- 
tempt. Slavonic  (slovene)  is  derived  from  slovo  (speech), 
and  means  people  with  articulate  language;  whereas 
the  Slavic  nations  call  the  Germans  Nemict,  which 
signifies  speechless,  dumb,  and  therefore  barbarian. 

Geocentric  astronomy  and  ethnocentric  geography 
have  been  relegated  long  ago  to  that  "  limbo  large  and 
broad''  which  is  the  predestined  receptacle  of  all  ex- 
ploded errors  and  illusions  engendered  by  human  vanity 
and  ignorance;  but  from  the  bondage  of  ethnocentric 
ethics,  manifesting  itself  in  national  prejudices  and 
prepossessions,  and  often  posing  as  a  paragon  of  virtue 
in  the  guise  of  patriotism,  even  the  most  advanced 
and  enlightened  peoples  have  not  yet  fully  emancipated 
themselves.  The  Hebrews  thought  they  were  doing 
the  will  of  their  tribal  god  (the  personification  of  the 
tribal  conscience)  by  borrowing  jewels  and  fine  raiment 
from  their  too-obliging  Egyptian  acquaintances  and  then 
running  away  with  them.  That  this  mean  abuse  of 
neighbourly  confidence  and  civility  w^as  not  a  mere 
momentary  freak  of  fraudulence  or  sudden  succumb- 
ing to  temptation,  but  the  outcome  of  settled  prin- 
ciples of  morality  and  a  general  rule  of  policy,  is  evi- 
dent from  the  approval  with  which  it  is  recorded,  as  well 
as  from  the  laws  subsequently  enacted,  which  permitted 
them  to  take  usury  of  aliens  and  to  sell  murrain  meat 
to  the  strangers  in  their  gates. 

This  is  the  kind  of  ethics  which  finds  expression 
in  the  legislation  of  all  barbaric  and  semi-civilized  races. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  25 

from  the  Eskimos  to  the  Hottentots.  The  Balantis  of 
Africa  punish  with  death  a  theft  committed  to  the 
detriment  of  a  tribesman,  but  encourage  and  reward 
thievery  from  other  tribes.  According  to  Cassar's  state- 
ment (De  Bello  Gallico,  lib.  vi,  c.  23),  the  Germans  did 
not  deem  it  infamous  to  steal  outside  of  the  precincts 
of  their  own  village,  but  rather  advocated  it  as  a  means 
of  keeping  the  young  men  of  the  community  in  train- 
ing and  rendering  them  vigilant  and  adroit.  But  we 
need  not  go  to  African  kraals  or  American  wigwams 
or  primeval  Teutonic  forests  for  illustrations  of  this 
rule  of  conduct.  Quite  recently  a  Frenchman  suc- 
ceeded as  commis-voyageur  in  swindling  a  number  of 
German  tradesmen  out  of  large  sums  of  money,  and  was 
applauded  for  his  exploit  by  Parisian  shopkeepers,  who 
readily  condoned  his  similar  but  slighter  offences 
against  themselves  on  account  of  the  satisfaction  they 
derived  from  the  more  serious  injury  done  to  their 
hereditary  foes  on  the  Ehine.  This  incident  proves 
how  easy  it  is  for  the  primitive  feeling  of  clanship, 
euphemistically  styled  patriotic  sentiment,  to  put  in 
abeyance  all  the  acquisitions  of  culture  and  set  the 
most  elementary  principles  of  honesty  a;id  morality 
at  defiance.  International  conscience  is  a  product  of 
modern  civilization,  but  it  is  still  a  plant  of  very  feeble 
growth — a  sickly  shrub,  whose  fruits  are  easily  blasted, 
and  for  the  most  part  drop  and  decay  before  they 
ripen. 

Sir  Henry  Sumner  Maine,  in  his  Lectures  on  thd    | 
Early  History  of  Institutions,  has  shown  with  admi-\^  * 
rable  force  and  suggestiveness  that  rude  and  savage 
tribes  uniformly  regard  consanguinity  as  the  only  basis 
of  friendship  and  moral  obligation  and  the  sole  cement 


26  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

of  society.  The  original  human  horde  was  held  together 
by  the  same  tie  of  blood-relationship  that  produces 
and  preserves  the  consciousness  of  unity  in  the  animal 
herd  or  causes  ants  and  bees  to  lead  an  orderly  and 
mutually  helpful  life  in  swarms.  In  all  these  com- 
munities the  outsider  is  looked  upon  as  an  outlaw; 
whoever  is  not  a  kinsman  is  a  foe,  and  may  be  assailed, 
despoiled,  enslaved,  or  slain  with  impunity.  Indeed, 
it  is  considered  not  only  a  right  but  also  an  imperative 
duty  to  injure  the  alien  by  putting  him  to  death  or  re- 
ducing him  to  servitude.  The  instinct  of  self-preserva- 
tion asserts  itself  in  this  form  with  gregarious  mam- 
mals and  insects;  and  all  primitive  associations  of  men 
are  founded  upon  this  principle  and  cohere  by  force 
of  this  attraction. 

A  superstitious  regard  for  blood  pervades  all  early 
ideas  and  institutions  of  mankind.  The  ancient  He- 
brews were  forbidden  to  eat  the  blood  of  a  slaughtered 
animal,  because  the  blood  is  the  life;  and  the  ortho- 
dox Israelite  still  clings  to  this  notion  and  will  not 
partake  of  butcher's  meat  that  is  not  gosh  or  cere- 
monially clean — i.  e.,  from  which  the  blood  has  not 
been  carefully  drained  off,  although  he  knows  that  this 
process  of  ritual  purification  deprives  the  flesh  of  much 
of  its  succulence  and  nutritive  value  as  food. 

It  is  a  widely  diffused  belief  among  aboriginal  and 
lower  races  that  the  blood  is  the  seat  of  the  soul;  hence 
blood-relationship  is  synonymous  with  soul-relationship. 
The  child  was  also  recognised  as  a  blood-relation  of  the 
mother,  but  not  of  the  father.  Out  of  this  concep- 
tion of  consanguinity  arose  the  custom  of  descent  in 
the  female  line,  whereby  the  children  of  a  man's  sister 
became  his  heirs  to  the  exclusion  of  his  own  offspring. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  27 

Curiously  enough  this  notion  is  confirmed,  to  some 
extent,  by  modern  science,  which  would  ascribe  to  the 
female  the  function  of  conserving  and  transmitting 
the  permanent  qualities  and  typical  characteristics  of 
the  race,  whereas  the  influence  of  the  male  in  propaga- 
tion is  variable,  innovating,  and  revolutionary,  and 
tends  to  produce  deviations  from  the  hereditary  norm. 

Cannibalism,  too,  as  a  tribal  rite,  originated  in  the 
belief  that  the  soul  resides  in  the  blood,  and  that  by 
drinking  the  blood  of  the  bravest  foeman  their  courage, 
cunning,  and  other  distinctive  and  desirable  traits  may 
be  acquired  and  thus  serve  to  increase  the  fighting  force 
and  efficiency  of  the  tribe. 

Brotherhood  was  also  created  artificially  or  cere- 
monially by  mingling  a  few  drops  of  the  blood  of  two 
persons  in  a  cup  of  wine  and  drinking  it.  Each  re- 
ceived into  his  veins  a  portion  of  the  other's  blood, 
and  thus  they  became  blood-related  and  were  bound 
by  the  same  mutual  obligations  as  they  would  have 
been  if  the  same  mother  had  given  them  birth.  The 
heroes  of  old  German  sagas  are  represented  as  drink- 
ing brotherhood  in  this  manner;  it  is  thus  that  Gun- 
ther  and  Siegfried  swear  inviolable  friendship  and 
fidelity  in  Wagner's  Gotterdammerung;  and  German 
students,  in  the  festive  enthusiasm  of  a  Commers,  are 
fond  of  imitating  their  mythical  forefathers  in  the 
solemn  celebration  of  this  mystic  rite. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  the  rhetorical  and  meta- 
phorical survivals  of  this  once  strong  conviction.  In 
referring  to  political  parties  in  France  the  Journal 
des  Debats  recently  remarked:  "It  is  not  true  that 
our  nation  consists  of  two  nations — ^the  heirs  of  the 
Emigration  and  those  of  the  Revolution.  This  dis- 
3 


28  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

tinction  no  longer  exists.  The  last  vestiges  of  it  have 
been  obliterated  on  the  battlefields,  where  all  French- 
men have  mingled  their  blood.  France  is  henceforth 
one  and  indivisible." 

The  noble  sentiment  expressed  by  the  Greek  comic 
poet  Menander  and  handed  down  to  us  in  the  lan- 
guage of  Terence,  his  Eoman  imitator,  "I  am  a 
man,  and  regard  nothing  human  as  alien  to  me," 
was  doubtless  shared  by  many  individual  thinkers  of 
antiquity,  especially  among  the  Greek  Stoics  and  their 
Eoman  disciples.  Cicero,  who  may  be  taken  as  one 
of  the  most  eminent  representatives  of  this  etiiical 
school,  lays  great  stress  upon  "love  of  mankind" 
(caritas  generis  humani),  in  distinction  from  the  love 
of  kindred  or  countrymen.  "  A  man,"  he  says,  "  should 
seek  to  promote  the  welfare  of  every  other  man,  who- 
ever he  may  be,  for  the  simple  reason  that  he  is  a 
man "  ;  and  declares  that  this  principle  is  the  bond 
of  universal  society  and  the  foundation  of  all  law.  He 
returns  to  this  topic  again  and  again,  and  never  tires 
of  enforcing  this  doctrine  as  fundamental  in  his  treatises 
on  duties  (De  Officiis),  on  the  highest  good  and  evil 
(De  Finibus  Bonorum  et  Malorum),  and  on  laws  (De 
Legibus).  That  he  regarded  this  broad,  cosmopolitan 
view  as  a  new  departure  in  ethics  is  evident  from  his 
remark  that  "  he  whom  we  now  call  a  foreigner  {peregri- 
num)  was  called  an  enemy  (hostis)  by  our  ancestors." 

The  distinguished  Christian  apologist  Lucius  Lac- 
tantius  bases  the  duty  of  human  kindness  upon  the 
hypothesis  of  human  kinship,  thus  reviving  and  am- 
plifying the  old  tribal  notion  which  limits  moral  obli- 
gation to  those  who  can  claim  a  common  progenitor. 
"  For,  if  we  all  derive  our  origin  from  one  man,  whom 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  29 

God  created,  we  are  plainly  of  one  blood;  and  there- 
fore it  must  be  deemed  the  greatest  wickedness  to  hate 
a  man,  even  though  he  be  guilty."  He  adds  that  "  we 
are  to  put  aside  enmities  and  to  soothe  and  allay  the 
anger  of  those  who  are  inimical  to  us  by  reminding 
them  of  their  relationship.  ...  On  account  of  this 
bond  of  brotherhood  God  teaches  us  never  to  do  evil, 
but  always  to  do  good."  He  also  quotes  a  passage  from 
the  Epicurean  Lucretius  to  the  effect  that  "we  are 
all  sprung  from  a  heavenly  seed  and  have  all  of  us 
the  same  father  "  ;  and  draws  from  this  statement  the 
conclusion  that  "they  who  injure  men  are  to  be  ac- 
counted as  savage  beasts." 

Lactantius  has  been  surnamed  the  Christian  Cicero, 
but  the  fundamental  principle  of  his  ethics,  as  formu- 
lated in  his  Divine  Institutions,  is  in  its  motive  char- 
acter and  moral  elevation  far  below  the  height  attained 
four  centuries  earlier  by  his  pagan  prototype.  The  re- 
sults of  their  teachings,  practically  applied,  were  equally 
cosmopolitan;  inasmuch  as  Lactantius  based  his  theory 
of  duty  on  the  Hebrew  legend  of  the  origin  and  descent 
of  man,  and  thus  enlarged  his  essentially  tribal  system 
of  ethics  so  as  to  embrace  the  whole  human  race. 

Marcus  Aurelius  defines  his  own  ethical  and  hu- 
manitarian standpoint  with  his  wonted  epigrammatic 
terseness:  "As  an  Antonine,  my  country  is  Rome;  as 
a  man,  it  is  the  world."  Unfortunately,  the  liberal 
spirit  of  the  philosopher,  even  when  he  happens  to  sit 
upon  a  throne,  seldom  exerts  any  direct  and  decisive 
influence  in  liberalizing  the  minds  of  the  masses  of 
mankind.  Homer  praises  the  kind  and  sympathetic 
heart  of  him  who  treats  the  stranger  as  a  brother.  But 
this  fine  sentiment  does  not  change  but  rather  con- 


30  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

firms  the  fact  that,  as  a  rule,  strangers  were  not  thus 
treated  in  the  Homeric  age.  As  a  general  statement 
it  remains  true  that  in  ancient  times  aliens  had  no  legal 
rights  whatsoever,  and  that  international  relations,  so 
far  as  they  existed  at  all,  were  relations  of  hostility. 

But  this  outlawry  de  jure  was  mitigated  de  facto  by 
investing  the  rite  of  hospitality  with  a  certain  sacred- 
ness.  Such  is  still  the  case  with  all  savage  and  semi- 
civilized  tribes,  as,  for  example,  with  the  Bedouins, 
who  hold  the  person  of  a  guest  inviolable,  even  though 
he  may  be  their  deadliest  foe.  This  custom  originated 
in  the  defenceless  and  helpless  condition  of  the  stranger, 
whose  alienage  placed  him  beyond  the  pale  of  law 
and  the  sphere  of  sympathy;  it  furnished  a  sort  of  com- 
pensation for  the  lack  of  all  natural  or  conventional 
claims  to  protection,  and  thus  supplied  a  temporary 
modus  Vivendi,  without  which  intertribal  intercourse 
would  have  been  absolutely  impossible. 

We  have  an  indication  and  illustration  of  this  pe- 
culiarity of  primitive  society  in  the  story  of  Cain,  who, 
as  a  fratricide,  was  not  only  guilty  of  murder  (a  matter 
of  comparatively  small  moment  in  the  eyes  of  the 
aboriginal  man),  but  also  of  treason  against  the  tribe 
by  violating  the  law  of  brotherhood  fundamental  to 
its  constitution  and  essential  to  its  existence;  and  when, 
by  reason  of  this  crime,  he  was  driven  out  of  the 
sheltering  circle  and  sanctuary  of  his  own  kith  and 
kin  and  became  a  fugitive  and  vagabond  in  the  earth, 
his  first  feeling  was  the  fear  lest  he  should  be  slain 
by  any  stranger  who  might  chance  to  meet  him.  The 
Lord  is  also  represented  as  recognising  the  possibility 
of  such  a  catastrophe,  and  as  setting  a  mark  upon  him 
in  order  to  avert  it. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  31 

The  stipulation  contained  in  the  Hebrew  code,  as 
well  as  in  the  code  of  other  Eastern  nations,  which 
made  it  the  duty  of  a  man  to  wed  his  brother's  widow, 
provided  the  first  union  was  childless,  and  to  raise  up 
seed  to  the  deceased,  was  only  a  modification  of  poly- 
andry and  difliered  from  the  conjugal  relations  still 
in  vogue  among  the  Thibetans  in  the  fact  that  the 
possession  of  the  same  wife  was  successive  instead  of 
simultaneous.  Both  of  these  matrimonial  customs  are 
survivals  of  the  earliest  form  of  marriage,  which  was 
not  individual,  but  tribal.  We  have  a  relic  of  this 
primitive  kind  of  wedlock  among  the  Californian  In- 
dians, who  practised  promiscuous  sexual  intercourse, 
so  far  as  the  members  of  the  same  tribe  were  con- 
cerned; the  woman  was  regarded  as  faithless  or  adulter- 
ous only  when  she  cohabited  with  a  man  belonging 
to  another  tribe. 

The  Greeks,  with  all  their  superior  culture,  never 
became  as  a  people  sufficiently  enlightened  to  lay  aside 
their  deep  distrust  and  depreciation  of  foreigners. 
Sparta  was  notoriously  hostile  to  strangers  (e;^^/36fez/09, 
or  guest-hating),  and  how  impossible  it  was  for  even 
a  cultivated  Athenian  to  look  at  the  world  at  large 
from  any  but  a  strictly  Hellenic  point  of  view  is  curi- 
ously and  comically  illustrated  in  the  drama  in  which 
-^schylus  glorifies  the  battle  of  Salamis,  where  the 
Persians  are  made  to  speak  of  themselves  as  barbarians 
balked  of  their  purpose,  and  to  describe  their  lamenta- 
tions over  their  defeat  as  dismal  barbaric  wailings. 

It  is  a  somewhat  surprising  and  quite  significant 
concession  to  Greek  arrogance  that  Plautus  should  use 
the  phrase  vortere  harhare  in  the  sense  of  turning  or 
translating  into  Latin.     It  is  possible,  however,  that 


32  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

he  may  have  borrowed  this  phrase  from  Philemon  and 
other  Greek  playwrights,  whose  comedies  he  imitated 
with  more  or  less  freedom,  but  always  with  a  touch 
of  native  genius.  Still,  we  know  that  the  Romans 
were  uniformly  called  barbarians,  and  seem  to  have 
recognised  the  correctness  of  this  appellation  down  to 
the  age  of  Augustus,  when  the  term  began  to  be  ap- 
pKed  chiefly,  if  not  exclusively,  to  the  Germans.  As 
our  earliest  information  concerning  the  Germanic  peo- 
ples was  derived  from  Greek  and  Roman  sources,  we 
have  been  misled  by  the  use  of  this  depreciatory  desig- 
nation to  think  of  them  as  wild  and  lawless  hordes, 
and  to  form  a  wholly  false  conception  of  the  grade 
and  quality  of  their  civilization. 

When  individuals  of  different  race  or  nationality 
formed  friendships  they  were  wont  to  confirm  the  pact 
by  an  exchange  of  tokens,  which  remained  as  heirlooms 
in  their  respective  families,  and  were  prized  by  their 
descendants  as  pledges  of  mutually  kind  and  hospitable 
treatment.  The  duty  of  helpfulness  was,  in  such  cases, 
quite  as  imperative  as  is  the  vow  of  vendetta,  which 
passes  as  a  precious  inheritance  of  hatred  from  Corsican 
father  to  son.  These  tokens  were  called  by  the  Greeks 
o-vfi^oXay  and  by  the  Romans  tesserce  hospitales,  and, 
although  they  were  eventually  superseded  by  better 
and  more  comprehensive  methods  and  ended  by  play- 
ing only  the  frivolous  part  of  a  sentimental  pastime  in 
social  life,  like  the  modern  philopena,  they  had  original- 
ly a  more  serious  purpose  and  were  of  no  small  im- 
portance as  means  of  promoting  intertribal  intercourse 
and  thus  encouraging  trade  and  leading  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  commercial  treaties. 

Another  step  toward  the  realization  of  the  con- 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  33 

ception  of  human  brotherhood  was  the  custom  estab- 
lished at  a  very  early  period  whereby  chiefs  of  tribes 
came  to  address  each  other  as  kinsmen  and  members 
of  one  family.  This  assumption  of  consanguinity, 
which  originated  in  the  desire  of  dynasties  to  strengthen 
their  position  and  to  perpetuate  their  power,  naturally 
led  to  increase  of  friendly  intercourse  and  to  frequent 
intermarriages,  so  that  they  finally  became  in  fact  what 
they  at  first  claimed  to  be  by  a  polite  and  politic  fiction. 
Traces  of  this  usage  are  found  in  the  oldest  records 
of  royalty.  Among  the  treasures  of  the  Berlin  and 
British  Museums  are  preserved  two  hundred  and  forty- 
one  tablets  of  cuneiform  inscriptions  containing  letters 
written  to  Amenophis  III  and  Amenophis  IV  of  Egypt 
by  Burnaburiash,  King  of  Babylonia,  and  Dushratta/ 
King  of  Mesopotamia,  which  show  that,  at  least  six- 
teen centuries  before  the  Christian  era,  "  dear  brother  '^ 
was  the  ceremonial  title  of  salutation  which  monarchs 
were  wont  to  use  in  their  epistolary  correspondence. 
This  feigning  of  a  common  lineage  still  survives  among 
crowned  heads,  and  the  vilest  plebian  adventurer  who, 
by  force  or  fraud,  gets  himself  proclaimed  king  or 
emperor  is  admitted  to  the  select  circle  of  sovereigns 
and  greeted  as  "  dear  cousin.^' 

Principles,  once  grown  obsolete,  are  denounced  as 
prejudices;  religious  beliefs,  which  have  been  sup- 
planted by  superior  creeds,  are  scoffed  at  as  supersti- 
tions; and  dethroned  deities  haunt  the  imagination 
of  their  former  worshipper  as  demons.  In  like  man- 
ner, the  lower  classes  of  civilized  communities  cor- 
respond, in  a  measure,  to  the  lower  races,  and  reflect 
atavistically  the  ideas  and  passions  of  primitive  man; 
and  in  periods  of  great  social  and  political  upheaval 


34  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

we  are  often  rudely  brought  face  to  face  with  tumultu- 
ous masses  of  these  strata  of  palasozoic  humanity  vio- 
lently and  unpleasantly  thrown  to  the  surface.  It 
crops  out  in  the  English  boor,  who  at  the  sight  of  a 
stranger  is  ever  ready  to  "'eave  'arf  a  brick  at  'im/' 
and  would  deem  the  neglect  of  this  duty  a  treasonable 
lack  of  local  patriotism  and  loyalty  to  time-honored 
tradition;  in  the  Cretan  herdsman,  who  instinctively 
seizes  his  cudgel  whenever  a  traveller  in  trousers  passes 
by;  and  in  the  Egyptian  fellah,  who  teaches  his  chil- 
dren to  spit  at  every  man  with  a  hat  on  and  cry  out: 
*' Yd  nasrdniyi  Yd  hhinzirl  0  you  Nazarene!  0 
you  pig! " 

The  publican,  in  some  parts  of  southern  Italy,  is 
still  disposed  to  reckon  with  the  foreigner  as  a  foe,  a 
forlorn  vagabond,  whom  it  is  his  native-born  privilege 
to  spoil.  The  blood  of  his  ancestor,  the  brigand,  courses 
in  his  veins,  and  his  first  impulse  is  to  plunder  the 
wayfarer.  Prudence  and  the  police  may  curb  this  pro- 
genital,  predatorial  proclivity;  but  the  self-restraint  al- 
ways costs  an  effort,  and,  as  a  compromise  with  his 
instinctive  feelings,  instead  of  relieving  the  guest  of 
his  purse  by  force,  he  robs  him  of  an  undue  portion 
of  its  contents  by  adding  two  or  three  hundred  per 
cent  to  the  usual  price  of  fare  and  lodgment. 

In  many  cantons  of  Switzerland,  and  especially 
in  the  Bernese  highlands,  we  have  the  spectacle  of  a 
whole  people  apparently  born  and  bred  to  consider 
mountain  passes,  romantic  valleys,  glaciers,  and  water- 
falls as  so  many  traps  for  curious  and  unwary  tourists, 
and  to  prize  sublime  scenery  merely  as  a  ready-made 
snare  to  catch  coots,  dupes,  gulls,  boobies,  and  other 
varieties   of  too   confiding  summer  birds  of  passage. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  35 

which  the  categorizing  mind  of  the  German  has  re- 
duced to  two  essentially  distinct  but  closely  connected 
classes,  Bergfexen  and  Sommerfrischler. 

This  clannish  spirit  even  invades  and  desecrates  the 
courts  of  justice,  and  the  Helvetian  Themis  is  espe- 
cially notorious  for  her  propensity  to  blink  the  legal 
rights  of  the  case  and  to  tip  the  balance  in  favour  of 
her  cantonal  or  federal  compatriots  as  opposed  to  the 
stranger  within  her  gates. 

In  France  the  droit  d'auhaine  or  jus  albinagii  con- 
fiscated to  the  crown  the  property  of  all  aliens  who 
died  within  the  limits  of  the  realm,  to  the  exclusion 
of  the  natural  heirs,  unless  these  happened  to  be  the 
king's  subjects.  This  barbarous  law  was  abolished  by 
a  decree  of  the  National  Assembly  on  the  6th  of  August, 
1790,  but  was  re-enacted  twelve  years  later  and  incor- 
porated in  the  Code  Napoleon,  modified,  however,  by 
a  clause  making  the  testamentary  capacity  of  aliens 
dependent  upon  reciprocity;  in  other  words,  it  was 
stipulated  that  the  will  of  a  foreigner  should  be  de- 
clared valid  in  France,  provided  the  laws  of  the  said 
foreigner's  country  placed  on  the  same  footing  the 
will  of  a  Frenchman  deceased  within  its  jurisdiction. 
On  the  14th  of  July,  1819,  the  droit  d'aubaine  was 
finally  abrogated  throughout  the  entire  kingdom,  after 
having  been  already  considerably  mitigated  and  par- 
tially annulled  by  the  municipal  authorities  of  Lyons 
and  other  industrial  and  commercial  cities,  which  found 
this  relic  of  mediseval  legislation  a  serious  obstruction 
to  foreign  trade. 

Akin  to  this  system  of  right  was  the  German 
Wildfangsrecht  or  jus  wildfangiatus,  also  known  as  jus 
'kolbelcerliij   which,  as  the   term  implies,   accorded  to 


36  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

human  beings  the  privilege  which  game  laws  guarantee 
to  the  quarry,  namely,  that  of  being  legally  hunted. 
Kolbenreclit  is  equivalent  to  club  law.  An  old  and  often 
quoted  proverb,  Kolbengericht  und  Faustrecht  ward  nie 
schlecht — the  law  of  the  strong  was  never  yet  wrong — is 
the  cynical  expression  of  protesting  submission  to  the 
inevitable,  recognised  as  outrageous.  It  is  the  same 
bitter  sarcasm  that  mocks  at  unjust  and  irresistible 
power  in  the  popular  saying,  "  Might  makes  right "  ; 
it  is  despair  taking  refuge  and  finding  relief  in  ironical 
humour,  which  turns  the  first  principles  of  ethics  topsy- 
turvy. 

Wildfangsrecht  was  originally  applied  to  fugitive 
serfs  and  to  strangers,  but  was  soon  extended  to  bastards 
and  bachelors,  gleemen  and  professional  champions  in 
ordeals  by  battle,  all  of  whom  lived  more  or  less  in  a 
state  of  outlawry  as  to  their  persons  and  property,  and 
could,  under  certain  circumstances,  be  reduced  to  the 
condition  of  chattels.  Foreigners  who  could  prove 
the  place  of  their  nativity  were  subjected  to  a  poll 
tax  (chevage)  for  the  protection  vouchsafed  to  them 
by  the  reeve  or  Vogt,  and  were  therefore  called  Vogt- 
leute.  In  the  Canton  de  Vaud  and  elsewhere  in  Switzer- 
land this  pollage  is  still  levied  as  permis  d'etahlissemeni, 
a  lingering  vestige  of  mediaeval  extortion  which  the 
most  enlightened  European  governments  have  now 
abolished.  Persons  of  unknown  origin  were  treated 
as  waifs  (epaves),  the  mere  flotson  and  waveson  on  the 
drifting  tide  of  humanity,  and  were  liable  to  be  seized 
and  envassaled  by  any  petty  lord  on  whose  territory 
they  chanced  to  strand.  Perhaps  a  diligent  study  of 
these  old  laws  might  suggest  to  American  legislators 
some  drastic  means  of  purging  the  country  of  tramps. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  37 

In  "  the  good  old  time  "  in  England  any  alien  could 
be  arrested  and  punished  for  the  crimes  and  misde- 
meanors of  other  aliens,  although  having  no  complicity 
with  them.  They  were  all  lumped  together  as  a  class, 
any  individual  of  which  was  liable  to  be  apprehended 
and  held  accountable  for  the  debts  incurred  or  for  the 
offences  committed  by  any  other  individual  of  the  class. 

The  idea  of  justice  implied  by  such  a  proceeding 
corresponds  to  that  entertained  by  the  aboriginal  Aus- 
tralian or  American,  who,  when  his  wife  dies,  feels 
himself  in  duty  bound  to  kill  the  wife  of  some  member 
of  another  tribe,  and  avenges  an  injury  inflicted  upon 
him  by  a  white  man  by  slaying  the  first  white  man 
he  happens  to  meet.  The  loss  or  offence,  whatever  it 
may  be,  is  tribal,  and  is  satisfied  with  tribal  expiation 
or  retaliation. 

A  case  of  this  kind  occurred  quite  recently  in  Da- 
kota. A  Sioux  Indian,  on  the  death  of  his  squaw,  went 
forth  from  his  lodge  with  his  gun  and  shot  a  missionary 
who  was  passing  by.  The  red  man  had  no  grudge 
against  the  white  man  as  an  individual;  on  the  con- 
trary, he  was  personally  fond  of  his  victim,  from  whom 
he  had  received  many  acts  of  kindness;  but  the  vow 
of  vengeance  was  as  sacred  as  that  made  by  Jephthah 
the  Gileadite,  and  had  to  be  as  religiously  kept. 

The  old  English  custom,  just  referred  to  as  a  sur- 
vival of  the  earliest  and  crudest  conception  of  tribal 
ethics,  prevailed  at  least  as  late  as  the  reign  of  Edward 
III — i.  e.,  till  about  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century; 
and  long  after  this  period  it  was  exceedingly  difficult 
to  enact  and  almost  impossible  to  enforce  laws  for  the 
protection  of  foreigners,  so  deeply  rooted  and  intense 
was  the  prejudice  against  them.     Even  far  down  into 


38  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

the  eighteenth  century  they  continued  to  he  regarded 
with  extreme  suspicion,  and  were  often  subjected  to 
gross  indignities,  independently  of  any  personal  quali- 
ties or  any  peculiar  conduct  on  their  part.  The  mere 
fact  of  their  alienage  sufficed  to  kindle  against  them 
the  anger  of  the  populace  and  turn  the  masses  into  an 
unruly  mob.  Quite  recently  a  Frenchman  and  his  wife, 
who  were  attending  a  theatre  in  London  near  the  Strand, 
went  to  an  eating  house  close  by  to  take  some  refresh- 
ment during  a  pause  in  the  play.  Very  soon  they  were 
attacked  by  several  persons  of  the  lower  class  and  se- 
verely beaten  until  they  were  finally  rescued  by  the 
police.  The  sole  provocation  to  this  sudden  assault  was 
that  they  spoke  a  foreign  tongue.  This  is  still  the  men- 
tal attitude  of  the  cockney,  and  cockneyism  is  only  a 
local  form  of  philistinism  by  no  means  confined  to  the 
precincts  of  Bow  Bells. 

The  laws  of  Venice,  as  expounded  by  Portia  in  the 
case  of  Shylock  vs.  Antonio,  discriminated  against  aliens 
as  opposed  to  citizens  in  a  manner  extremely  fatal  to 
the  plaintiff  and  exceedingly  characteristic  of  medi- 
agval  legislation. 

Under  the  influence  of  the  political  panic  caused  by 
the  excesses  of  the  French  Eevoiution,  Lord  Grenville 
succeeded,  in  1793,  in  persuading  the  British  Parlia- 
ment to  pass  an  alien  bill,  in  which  the  spirit  of  feudal- 
ism reasserted  itself;  and  since  the  abolition  of  this 
retrogressive  law,  which  was  effected  chiefly  through 
the  enlightened  energy  of  George  Canning,  the  leaders 
of  the  Tory  party  have  repeatedly  endeavoured  to  re- 
enact  it.  In  every  age  and  every  country  landed 
aristocracies  have  always  shown  a  marked  tendency  to 
narrowness,  provincialism,  and  distrust  in  their  inter- 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  39 

national  relations.  Indeed,  from  time  immemorial, 
agricultural  communities  have  been  excessively  con- 
servative in  this  respect  and  hostile  to  progress;  whereas 
commercial  states  and  cities,  whose  prosperity  is  in 
proportion  to  their  cosmopolitanism  and  dependent 
upon  it,  are  naturally  philallogeneal  (to  coin  a  word 
from  the  Greek  of  the  Alexandrian  patriarch  Cyril, 
who  unfortunately  seldom  exemplified  in  his  conduct 
the  virtue  expressed  by  the  epithet),  or  friendly  to  for- 
eigners and  easily  accessible  to  influences  from  with- 
out. 

Even  in  America,  where  all  portions  of  the  popula- 
tion are  more  mobile  and  undergo  more  rapid  and  radi- 
cal changes  than  in  other  lands,  the  farmers  are  noto- 
riously tenacious  of  old  ideas  and  suspicious  of  reforma- 
tory movements  of  all  kinds,  following  their  traditions 
and  clinging  to  their  prejudices  long  after  artisans 
and  other  handworkers  of  the  manufacturing  centers 
and  large  cities  have  cast  aside  these  notions  as  obsolete 
and  injurious. 

All  European  governments  appear  to  be  periodically 
or  epidemically  affected  with  spasms  of  antipathy  to 
aliens.  France  suffered  from  a  particularly  severe  at- 
tack of  this  sort  just  before  the  Napoleonic  coup  d'etat, 
and  now  betrays  serious  symptoms  of  a  relapse,  which 
it  is  to  be  hoped  do  not  portend  an  imperial  restoration. 
As  a  rule,  such  manifestations  may  be  regarded  as  evi- 
dences of  internal  derangement,  which  is  pretty  sure 
to  break  out  sooner  or  later  in  some  violent  disorder. 
Knownothingism  in  the  United  States  was  the  symp- 
tom of  such  a  crisis,  although  its  indications  were  at 
that  time  only  partially  understood. 

It  is  but  recently,  in  fact,  that  civilized  nations 


40  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

have  rid  themselves  of  the  most  obnoxious  relics  of 
ethnocentric  prejudice  in  their  legislation — such,  for  ex- 
ample, as  the  gahella  hereditaria,  which  discriminated 
against  foreigners  in  matters  of  inheritance;  and  the 
detractus  'personalis,  which  virtually  punished  emigra- 
tion by  the  imposition  of  a  heavy  fine.  These  vestiges 
of  vassalage  were  removed  from  the  statute-books  of 
the  German  states  in  relation  to  each  other  by  the  acts 
of  federation  of  1815,  and  have  been  successively  abol- 
ished between  Germany  and  other  countries  by  inde- 
pendent treaties. 

The  English  law  of  extradition  with  other  Euro- 
pean powers  still  refuses  to  deliver  up  or  to  prosecute 
an  Englishman  who  has  committed  a  felony  in  a  foreign 
land,  unless  the  crime  has  been  committed  against  one 
of  his  own  countrymen.  Some  years  ago  a  case  of  this 
land  occurred  in  Zurich,  and  still  more  recently  in 
Munich.  In  the  latter  instance,  one  of  the  burglars, 
although  residing  in  London,  proved  to  be  an  American 
by  birth,  and  was  therefore  handed  over  to  the  Bavarian 
police,  and  finally  sentenced  to  ten  years'  imprison- 
ment, while  his  English  confederate  in  crime  was  set 
at  liberty.  Here  we  have,  as  the  result  of  insularism, 
a  survival  of  ethnocentric  ethics  in  its  crassest  and  most 
offensive  form,  such  as  one  would  expect  to  find  only 
among  a  people  still  in  the  tribal  stage  of  develop- 
ment. 

In  the  volume  already  cited,  Sir  Henry  Sumner 
Maine  not  only  shows  kinship  to  have  been  the  original 
basis  of  society,  but  also  indicates  the  process  by  which 
mankind  may  have  gradually  grown  out  of  this  primi- 
tive condition.  The  head  of  the  family  soon  became 
through  natural  increase  the  head  of  a  clan  or  tribe. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  41 

The  patriarch  possessed  the  authority  and  exercised 
the  functions  of  a  chieftain  over  his  lineal  and  collateral 
descendants,  who  were  known  as  his  men  and  were 
called  by  his  name.  He  was  honoured  and  obeyed 
as  their  first  man,  Furst,  or  prince,  their  stem-sire  or 
king,  an  appellation  which  has  nothing  to  do  with  per- 
sonal "  canning ''  or  cunning,  as  Carlyle,  in  his  exces- 
sive admiration  of  human  force  and  faculty,  would 
fain  make  us  believe,  but  refers  solely  to  race  (kuni). 
The  ruler  was  an  ethnarch  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the 
term,  and  held  his  position  by  virtue  of  his  primo- 
genitureship  or  procreative  seniority. 

The  correctness  of  this  theory,  so  far  as  the  genetic 
connection  of  the  tribe  with  the  family  is  concerned, 
may  be  questioned.  Instead  of  the  former  being  an 
aggregation  or  expansion  of  the  latter,  it  is  highly 
probable  that  the  primitive  tribe  is  older  than  the  family 
and  the  product  of  promiscuous  sexual  relations,  and 
that  families  originated  in  a  subsequent  process  of 
domestic  differentiation.  Polyandry  and  the  custom  of 
tracing  descent  exclusively  in  the  female  line  would 
seem  to  point  in  this  direction.  The  institution  of  the 
family,  even  in  its  polygamous  form,  presupposes  a 
certain  ethical  element,  which  can  hardly  be  predicated 
of  primeval  barbarism. 

So,  too,  the  most  prominent  feature  in  the  social 
organization  of  the  anthropoid  apes  and  in  all  simian 
communities  is  the  troop  or  tribe  under  the  leadership 
of  the  most  powerful  male.  A  band  of  orang-outangs  is 
doubtless  an  association  of  blood-relations,  but  there  is 
no  recognition  of  patriarchal  authority  as  such  and 
no  evidence  of  distinct  divisions  into  families.  The 
community  is  a  gregarious  group  of  individuals  joined 


4:2  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

in  affinity,  but  not  yet  separated  into  single  pairs  with 
clearly  recognised  and  jealously  defended  conjugal 
rights;  and  sovereignty  is  simply  the  assertion  of  su- 
perior force,  although  this  constitution  of  the  simian 
tribe  does  not  entirely  exclude  the  existence  and  exer- 
cise of  moral  qualities  in  the  mutual  relations  of  its 
members. 

It  is,  however,  a  matter  of  no  moment  for  the  fur- 
ther evolution  of  society,  whether,  at  the  beginning, 
the  family  expanded  into  the  tribe  or  was  gradually 
differentiated  out  of  it.  The  fact  remains  that  the 
tribe  was  held  together  by  the  cement  of  consanguinity, 
and  that  the  authority  of  the  tribal  head  was  derived 
primarily  from  the  respect  and  reverence  due  to  him 
as  common  progenitor,  aided,  of  course,  by  his  ability 
to  enforce  his  claims  to  rulership  in  case  an  ambitious 
and  rebellious  Absalom  should  be  disposed  to  question 
them.  So  strong  and  persistent  is  this  sentiment  that, 
even  now,  the  number  of  a  man's  noble  ancestors  is 
supposed  to  entitle  him,  by  the  grace  of  God,  to  sover- 
eignty, or  to  confer  upon  him  some  exceptional  privi- 
lege and  power. 

With  the  transition  from  a  nomadic  to  a  sedentary 
social  state,  an  important  change  takes  place.  No 
sooner  has  a  people  acquired  fixed  habitations  and 
established  permanent  settlements  than  there  arises 
the  idea  of  ownership  in  the  soil,  and  the  chief  of  the 
tribe  becomes  the  lord  of  the  land.  He  is  no  longer 
merely  the  head  of  an  organized  body  of  roving  men, 
but  he  also  claims  and  exercises  jurisdiction  over  a 
more  or  less  definitely  circumscribed  district  or  domain 
and  over  all  persons  dwelling  within  its  borders.  Tribal 
sovereignty  or  chieftainship  is  thus  superseded  by  ter- 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  43 

ritorial  sovereignty  or  dominion,  and  with  this  trans- 
formation the  state,  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  term, 
really  begins. 

At  this  early  stage,  however,  proprietorship  in  land 
was  not  individual,  but  communal.  It  was  the  realiza- 
tion, to  some  extent,  of  the  socialistic  ideal  of  collective 
or  governmental  ownership  of  landed  property,  the 
return  to  which  a  modern  school  of  reformers  would 
fain  persuade  themselves  and  others  to  regard  as  a  step 
in  advance. 

It  is  also  interesting  to  note  that  this  most  impor- 
tant and  epoch-making  transition  from  pasturage  to 
tillage  was  due  to  the  initiative  and  activity  of  women. 
Everywhere  in  the  growth  of  society  women  have  been 
the  first  agriculturists.  While  the  men  were  leading 
the  life  of  hunters  or  herdsmen,  with  frequent  epi- 
sodes of  pillage  and  predatory  warfare,  women  began 
to  cultivate  the  soil  and  to  rear  domestic  fowls,  to  spin 
and  to  weave,  and  to  develop,  in  a  rude  way,  various 
kinds  of  industry.  This  is  the  condition  in  which 
we  still  find  all  savage  and  semi-civilized  tribes.  He- 
rodotus (vol.  vi)  says  of  the  Thracians,  "  1  hey  regard 
tillage  as  the  most  degrading  and  pillage  as  the  most 
honourable  occupation."  The  savage  looks  upon  all 
forms  of  manual  labour,  and  especially  husbandry, 
as  ignoble,  and  therefore  leaves  such  work  to  his  squaw. 

At  first,  her  efforts  in  this  direction  were  quite 
ignored  and  often  thwarted  by  the  sudden  removal  of 
the  tribe  to  another  place  before  she  could  reap  the 
fruits  of  her  toil.  The  little  patch  of  ground  which 
she  had  planted  was  deemed  of  small  account,  compared 
with  the  pleasures  and  products  of  the  chase,  and  was 
frequently   abandoned   without   hesitation   before   the 


44:  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

meager  harvest  was  ripe.  For  this  reason  harley  was 
the  earliest  grain  cultivated,  because  it  is  the  hardiest 
of  all  grains  and  matures  soonest.  It  was  a  long  time 
before  the  fields  tilled  by  women  became  of  sufficient 
importance,  as  supplying  means  of  subsistence,  to  keep 
the  tribe  settled  for  a  whole  season  in  one  spot,  or  even 
to  induce  them  to  return  thither  in  the  autumn  and 
remain  there  until  the  crop  was  gathered.  This  semi- 
nomadism  was  the  first  step  toward  a  sedentary  life 
and  the  starting  point  of  a  higher  civilization,  and 
woman  was  the  chief  agent  in  its  accomplishment,  al- 
though unconscious  of  the  immense  change  which  her 
humble  efforts  were  effecting. 

For  a  similar  reason  the  weakest  male  members  of 
the  tribe  were  the  first  artificers  and  mechanical  in- 
ventors. Men  who  were  crippled  or  otherwise  incapable 
of  waging  war  and  following  the  chase,  if  they  had  not 
been  left  to  perish  at  their  birth,  remained  at  home 
and  made  hunting  implements  and  weapons  of  war  for 
their  more  vigourous  and  valorous  tribesmen,  and  thus 
acquired  skill  in  handicraft,  sharpened  their  wits,  and 
developed  their  inventive  faculties.  In  mythology,  the 
gods  of  the  smithy,  Hephasstus,  Vulcan,  and  Veland, 
are  represented  as  lame,  and  the  experts  in  ores  and 
workers  in  metals  are  dwarfs,  gnomes,  and  creatures 
of  stunted  growth.  These  physical  peculiarities  are  not 
mere  mythopoeic  whimseys  and  creations  of  the  fancy, 
but  correspond  to  real  facts  in  the  primitive  history 
of  the  race,  and  point  to  the  class  of  persons  who  were 
the  earliest  promoters  of  the  arts. 

The  supersession  of  tribal  by  territorial  sovereignty, 
although  radical  and  permanent,  was  gradual  and 
scarcely  perceptible  in  its  character,  and  did  not  begin 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  45 

to  express  itself  in  language  till  many  centuries  after 
the  change  had  been  fully  accomplished.  Mediaeval 
and  modern  history  furnish  numerous  illustrations  of 
this  process  of  social  evolution  and  the  manner  of 
its  operation.  As  Mr.  Maine  has  remarked,  there  had 
been  kings  of  England  and  of  France  long  before  John 
the  Landless  and  Henry  IV  assumed  respectively  these 
official  titles;  although  their  predecessors  had  always 
been  styled  kings  of  the  English  and  of  the  French. 
The  Czar,  who,  while  bearing  sway  as  a  territorial 
sovereign,  preserves  more  than  any  other  European 
ruler  the  peculiarities  of  a  tribal  chieftain,  still  calls 
himself  Samodershez,  or  Autocrat  of  all  the  Russians, 
and  it  was  perfectly  in  keeping  with  the  character  and 
career  of  !N>ipoleon  I,  as  a  condottiere  on  a  colossal 
scale,  that  he  took  the  title  of  "Emperor  of  the 
French.''  His  interest  was  centered  wholly  in  the 
army,  which  he  loved  and  fostered  in  the  same  spirit 
that  Tamerlane  cherished  his  Mongolian  hordes  and  Fra 
Diavolo  his  band  of  brigands.  The  King  of  Prussia  bears 
the  title  of  "  German  Emperor "  (Deutscher  Kaiser), 
not  Emperor  of  Germany,  since  the  latter  would  be 
inconsistent  with  the  political  existence  and  integrity 
of  the  other  German  states  and  a  manifest  usurpation 
of  the  rights  and  prerogatives  (HoJieitsreclite)  of  the 
confederated  princes  and  potentates.  His  imperial 
sovereignty  is,  therefore,  essentially  tribal;  he  is,  so 
to  speak,  the  chief  of  the  German  confederated  mon- 
archs,  and  exercises  territorial  sovereignty  only  as  King 
of  Prussia.  There  has  been  a  long  succession  of  Roman- 
German  and  German  emperors,  but  never  an  Emperor 
of  Germany. 

A  nomadic  people,  wandering  from  place  to  place. 


46  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

is  not  associated  in  any  sense  with  the  soil;  the  tribe 
remains  the  same,  but  not  the  territory  it  occupies. 
With  the  beginning  of  agriculture  and  sedentariness 
this  relation  is  reversed.  The  conception  of  a  nation, 
nowadays,  implies  fixed  or  at  least  well-defined  geo- 
graphical boundaries.  Changes  may  take  place  in  the 
character  of  the  inhabitants  and  in  the  constitution 
of  the  government  as  the  result  of  emigration  and 
revolution;  individuals  and  famiUes  may  disappear 
and  be  superseded  by  others  of  a  different  stock,  but  the 
nation  remains,  as  it  were,  adscripta  glebw  within  cer- 
tain territorial  limits  and  is  not  destroyed  by  any  ad- 
mixture of  foreign  with  native  elements  in  the  popu- 
lation. Mr.  Maine  states  this  point  very  clearly  and 
concisely  when  he  says:  *'"'  England  was  once  the  coun- 
try which  Englishmen  inhabited.  Englishmen  are  now 
the  people  who  inhabit  England."  An  East  Indian 
by  blood  may  be  an  Englishman  in  the  modern  sense 
of  the  term  as  well  as  an  Anglo-Saxon  of  purest  lineage, 
however  earnestly  Lord  Salisbury  may  deprecate  the 
idea  that  a  Hindu  or  any  other  "black  man,"  even 
though  he  may  be,  like  Dadabhoi  Naoroji,  a  gentleman 
and  a  scholar,  and  the  peer  of  the  Tory  premier  him- 
self in  political  wisdom  and  ability,  should  be  sent 
to  the  British  Parliament  by  an  English  constituency. 
It  would  seem,  therefore,  that,  even  at  this  late  day, 
a  man  may  be  her  British  Majesty's  first  minister  of 
state  and  yet  entertain  the  notion,  which  prevailed 
in  the  days  of  Warren  Hastings  and  still  lingers  among 
the  subalterns  of  the  colonial  service,  that  an  East  In- 
dian is  a  "  nigger." 

Nowhere  is  national  feeling  stronger  and  race  feel- 
ing weaker  than  in  the  United  States,  where  the  negro, 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TEIBAL  SOCIETY.  47 

notwitlistanding  the  prejudice  growing  out  of  his 
former  condition  of  servitude,  is  as  truly  an  American 
and  as  fully  sensible  of  this  fact  as  any  scion  of  the 
Pilgrim  fathers.  It  is  unquestionable  that  the  old 
Puritan  stock  is  rapidly  disappearing  from  New  Eng- 
land, partly  through  natural  extinction  and  partly 
through  westward  migration,  and  is  being  supplanted 
by  Irish  and  Canadian  French;  but  this  circumstance 
does  not  blot  New  England  from  the  map  nor  convert 
it  into  New  Ireland  or  New  France.  On  the  contrary, 
the  descendants  of  the  Celtic  immigrant  are  assimilated 
and  transmuted  by  their  environment  and  become  New- 
Englanders.  The  consciousness  of  what  might  be  called 
common  territoriality  tends  not  only  to  bind  together 
and  to  blend  diverse  races  into  that  "  unity  of  a  people  " 
^hich  constitutes  a  nation,  but  also  to  attenuate .  and 
to  loosen  the  social  and  political  unions,  which  are  based 
upon  common  descent,  and  finally  ruptures  them  alto- 
gether. 

It  is  also  in  the  United  States  that  the  antithesis 
to  tribalism  has  found  its  strongest  expression  in  legis- 
lation. In  an  act  of  Congress,  approved  July  27,  1868, 
the  right  of  voluntary  expatriation  is  declared  to  be  "  a 
natural  and  inherent  right  of  all  people,  indispensable 
to  the  enjoyment  of  the  rights  of  life,  liberty,  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness,"  _and  any  denial  or  restriction  of 
this  right,  or  question  of  its  v  alidity,  is  affirmed  to  be  ''  in- 
consistent with  the  fundamental  principles  of  the  re- 
public." In  fact,  this  enactment  is  only  a  reiteration 
and  general  application  of  the  "  self-evident  truth " 
upon  which  the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  based, 
and  to  the  vindication  of  which  by  force  of  arms  our 
Government  owes  its  existence.    It  is  the  abrogation  of 


48  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

the  doctrine  of  personal  and  perpetual  allegiance  to  the 
sovereign  of  one^s  native  land,  which  is  a  survival  of  the 
notion,  still  prevailing  among  many  savage  nations, 
that  the  chieftain  is  the  absolute  owner  of  the  mem- 
bers of  his  tribe  and  can  dispose  at  will  of  their  serv- 
ices, their  property,  and  their  lives.  A  strenuous  effort 
to  maintain  this  positon  and  to  induce  other  powers  to 
accept  this  principle  has  always  been  one  of  the  chief 
features  of  the  foreign  policy  of  the  United  States,  and 
in  a  few  cases  the  Department  of  State  has  even  carried 
the  assertion  of  it  to  the  verge  of  war.  It  was  partially 
or  conditionally  acknowledged  in  the  treaty  of  February 
22,  1868,  between  the  United  States  and  the  North 
German  Confederation,  and  fully  avowed  in  the  so- 
called  Burlingame  treaty  formed  a  few  months  later 
between  the  United  States  and  China,  the  fifth  article 
of  which  explicitly  declares  that  both  the  sovereign 
powers  "cordially  recognise  the  inherent  and  inalien- 
able right  of  man  to  change  his  home  and  allegiance." 

In  utter  disregard  of  the  principle  involved  in  these 
treaty  stipulations  Congress  has  since  then  passed  two 
acts  practically  denying  the  right  of  expatriation  by  re- 
fusing to  accept  its  logical  consequences — namely,  the 
right  of  the  individual  thus  expatriated  to  settle,  labour, 
and  become  naturalized  in  the  country  to  which  he 
chooses  to  emigrate.  The  first  of  these  acts  was  that 
of  1875  forbidding  foreigners  to  enter  the  United  States 
under  contract  to  labour,  and  the  second  was  that  of 
1882  excluding  Chinese  from  the  privilege  of  American 
citizenship.  In  both  cases  the  abrogation  of  this  "in- 
herent and  inalienable  right  of  man''  and  "funda- 
mental principle  of  the  republic "  was  the  result  of 
demagogic  pandering  to  the  passions  and  prejudices  of 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  4.9 

the  lowest  classes  of  the  people,  who  still  worship  "  the 
idols  of  the  tribe  "  and  show  their  faith  by  their  works 
in  burning  negroes  at  the  South  and  mobbing  Mon- 
golians in  the  far  West.  It  is  especially  in  remote  and 
sparsely  populated  regions  of  the  nominally  civilized 
world  that  primitive  barbarism  survives  and  bears  sway.* 

The  aborigines  of  British  America,  who  can  not  re- 
gard human  beings  otherwise  than  from  a  tribal  point  of 
view,  still  speak  of  the  English  as  King  George's  men; 
but  the  inhabitants  of  Canada  consider  themselves 
Canadians  irrespectively  of  their  ancestral  origin,  and 
the  same  readiness  to  sink  the  claims  of  lineage  when 
they  conflict  with  territorial  interests  manifests  itself 
even  in  the  more  recent  colonies  of  Australia  and  New 
Zealand.  Geographical  contiguity  proves,  in  such  cases, 
stronger  than  genealogical  connections;  the  old  proverb, 
that  blood  is  thicker  than  water,  does  not  hold  true  of 
oceans. 

The  appeals  that  have  been  made  in  recent  times  to 
ethnic  antipathies  and  ethnic  sympathies  for  the  pur- 
poses of  political  propagandism  or  the  promotion  of  per- 
sonal ambition  are  anachronistic  attempts  to  resuscitate 
the  tribal  spirit  under  new  forms  and  on  a  larger  scale 
by  a  perverse  and  pseudo-scientific  application  of  the 
results  of  comparative  philology  to  public  affairs.  The 
hobby  of  Napoleon  III  concerning  the  unity  of  the 
Latin  nations,  and  the  necessity  of  their  closer  con- 
federation under  the  hegemony  of  France,  was,  like 
his  Life  of  Caesar,  an  act  of  historical  self -justification, 
a  desperate  endeavour  to  explain  his  own  raison  d'etre, 

*  Cf.  An  Abandoned  Position  in  The  Nation,  vol.  Ivii,  No.  1485, 
p.  443. 


50  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

and  thus  set  up  a  temporary  prop  to  a  rickety  and  root- 
less dynasty. 

Panslavism  may  continue,  for  a  time,  to  please  the 
imagination  and  to  fire  the  zeal  of  a  people  so  peculiarly 
subjected,  in  many  respects,  to  primitive  social  condi- 
tions and  so  powerfully  swayed  by  primitive  ideas  as  are 
the  Eussians;  but  Germany  has  long  since  outgrown 
the  swaddling-clout  of  Panteutonism,  and  no  ranting 
of  anti-Semitic  agitators  and  men  of  that  ilk  about 
ur-deutsch  and  rein-deutsch  can  permanently  affect  the 
public  mind  or  elicit  a  favourable  response  in  legis- 
lative enactments. 

There  is  no  cry  so  foolish  or  pernicious  that  it  will 
not  find  a  ringing  echo  in  the  empty  brain-pan  of  some 
fanatic,  no  whimsey  so  silly  and  absurd  that  it  will  not 
be  caught  up  and  preached  as  a  new  gospel  of  universal 
redemption  by  a  few  pamphleteering  demagogues  or 
ill-balanced  apostles  of  reform.  Impecunious  owners 
of  poorly  furnished  and  tenantless  garrets  are  only  too 
ready  to  let  them  to  the  first  vagrant  that  knocks  at 
the  door,  however  seedy  his  appearance  and  doubtful  his 
repute.  Even  the  anti-Semitic  crusade,  so  far  as  it  has 
succeeded  in  getting  a  hearing  and  making  any  head- 
way among  sensible  persons,  has  done  so  by  appealing 
to  the  liberal  spirit  of  the  age  and  representing  itself 
as  a  protest  against  the  tribal  exclusiveness  of  Judaism. 

The  constitution  of  the  aboriginal  tribe  as  a  com- 
pact body  of  kinsmen,  animated  by  feelings  of  hostility 
toward  all  other  tribes,  necessitated  the  intermarriage 
of  blood-relations.  If,  on  account  of  scarcity  of  females, 
or  for  any  other  reason,  a  man  desired  to  wed  a  woman 
of  another  tribe,  instead  of  wooing  her  as  a  friend,  he 
waylaid  her  as  a  foe,  stunned  her  with  a  blow  of  his 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRIBAL  SOCIETY.  51 

war-club,  and  carried  her  off  as  booty  rather  than  beauty 
to  his  camp,  where  she  served  him  henceforth,  not  so 
much  as  his  companion  and  helpmate  as  his  slave  and 
beast  of  burden. 

Even  after  this  tribal  exclusiveness  and  isolation 
had  ceased  and  a  certain  amount  of  amicable  intertribal 
intercourse  had  grown  up,  it  was  still  deemed  more 
virtuous  or,  as  we  would  say,  more  patriotic  for  a  man 
to  marry  his  own  kin  than  to  take  his  wife  or  wives 
from  an  alien  people.  The  tribal  religion  also  lent  its 
special  sanction  to  such  nuptials.  Survivals  of  this 
sentiment  are  found  in  the  ancient  customs  and  in  the 
sacred  Scriptures  and  traditions  of  many  nations,  espe- 
cially in  the  Orient. 

Thus,  in  the  Avesta,  a  marriage  of  next  of  kiii 
(quaUvadatha)  is  declared  to  be  particularly  praise- 
worthy and  well-pleasing  to  Ahuramazada,  the  Good 
Spirit  (Visparad,  iii,  18).  This  "kinship-union''  is  a 
prominent  article  of  faith  in  the  Mazdayasnian  creed 
(Yasna,  xiii,  28);  and  in  the  Book  of  Arda  Viraf  (ii, 
1,  2)  Viraf  is  said  to  have  had  seven  sisters,  who  were 
to  him  as  wives  (chigun  neshman),  and  '.his  circum- 
stance is  adduced  as  evidence  of  his  extraordinary  piety. 
The  connubial  relations  of  this  model  of  a  religious 
man  were  both  polygamous  and  incestuous. 

Herodotus  states  (iii,  88)  that  Cambyses,  the  son  and 
successor  of  Cyrus,  was  wedded  to  his  own  sister  Atossa; 
and  when,  in  the  Hebrew  story,  Tamar  rebukes  Amnon 
for  his  guilty  passion  and  tells  him  that  "  no  such  thing 
ought  to  be  done  in  Israel,"  she  refers  solely  to  her 
brother's  folly  and  wickedness  in  seeking  a  secret  and 
illicit  connection,  and  suggests  that,  if  he  will  only 
speak  to  the  king  on  the  subject,  there  would  be  no 


52  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

obstacle  to  their  union.  That  such  marriages  were  com- 
mon  in  the  earlier  history  of  the  Jews  is  evident  from 
the  fact  that  Abram  took  to  wife  his  half-sister  Sarah, 
and  this  event  is  not  recorded  as  an  unusual  occurrence. 
Among  the  Persians  this  custom  seems  to  have  been 
confined,  for  the  most  part,  to  priests  and  kings,  who 
constitute  always  and  everywhere  the  two  most  con- 
servative classes  of  society.  Thus  it  came  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  mark  of  distinction  or  an  enviable  privi- 
lege, of  which  wealthy  persons  of  inferior  rank  some- 
times endeavoured  to  avail  themselves;  but  there  is  no 
evidence  that  it  remained,  within  historical  times,  a  law 
for  the  entire  nation  or  was  generally  practised  by  the 
people  at  large.  The  Magians  continued  to  wive  their 
sisters  in  conformity  to  ancient  usage  and  holy  tradition, 
for  the  same  reason  that  stone  knives  and  hatchets  are 
used  in  sacrificial  rites  and  fire  for  the  altar  is  kindled 
by  laboriously  rubbing  two  sticks  together  long  after 
these  clumsy  methods  have  been  superseded  in  secular 
life  by  steel  implements  and  lucif er  matches. 


CHAPTER  II. 

BELIGIOUS    BELIEF    AS    A    BASIS     OF    MOEAL     OBLIGA- 
TION. 

The  bond  of  blood  superseded  by  the  bond  of  belief.  Theocentric 
attraction  superior  to  ethnocentric  attraction.  The  fiction  of 
sacramental  kinship  in  the  Catholic  Church.  Religion  as  the 
cement  of  primitive  society.  Tribal  religions  nonproselytiz- 
ing.  Religious  antagonisms  in  old  Aryan  society.  Zarathus- 
tra's  mission  and  creed.  The  worship  of  Ahuramazda  and 
the  holiness  of  agriculture.  Inculcation  of  thrift  and  frui- 
tion by  the  Ahuryan  religion.  Condemnation  of  asceticism 
and  celibacy.  The  begetting  of  sons  as  a  means  of  salvation. 
The  legend  of  Yima  and  the  transition  from  pastoral  to  agri- 
cultural life.  Antagonism  between  the  good  spirit  and  the 
evil  mind.  Modern  examples  of  this  enmity :  Dards,  Cos- 
sacks, Bedouins,  and  Mormons.  Sinfulness  of  lending  money 
on  interest.  Effects  of  this  primitive  notion  i  a  mediaeval  and 
modern  times.  Gradual  growth  of  more  enl  ghtened  views. 
Tribal  spirit  of  Jewish  burglars  in  Prussia.  Uses  of  the 
Schabbesgoi".  Brutality  of  the  higher  toward  the  lower  races. 
Relapses  into  savagery  through  emigration.  Moral  restraint 
resulting  from  rapid  international  intercourse. 

Following  the  primitive  period  of  tribal  ethics 
comes  a  second  stage  of  social  and  moral  development, 
which  Mr.  Maine  calls  the  supersession  of  the  bond  of 
blood  by  the  bond  of  belief.  Ethnocentric  attraction 
gives  way  to  what  might  be  called  theocentric  attrac- 
tion, and  a  broader  and  more  spiritual  sort  of  associa- 

53 


54:  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

tion  is  formed,  having  for  its  basis,  not  consanguinity, 
but  conformity  in  religious  conceptions.  The  god  takes 
the  place  of  the  human  progenitor  of  the  tribe,  or  rather 
grows  out  of  his  deification  in  the  evolution  of  ancestor 
worship,  which  is  probably  the  oldest  of  cults. 

Nevertheless,  in  this  case,  the  fundamental  princi- 
ple of  primitive  society,  which  makes  friendship  coex- 
tensive with  kinship,  is  not  abrogated,  but  only  en- 
larged in  its  application,  causing  those  who  worship  the 
same  deities  or  propitiate  the  same  demons  to  enter 
into  fraternal  relations  and  call  themselves  brethren. 

The  canonical  prohibition  of  marriage  between  per- 
sons connected  merely  by  the  artificial  ties  of  a  reli- 
gious rite,  such  as  sponsors  and  baptized  infants,  god- 
fathers, godmothers,  and  godchildren,  proves  how  in- 
timately the  idea  of  ritual  relationship  was  associated 
with  that  of  real  relationship  in  the  minds  of  those 
who  established  and  perpetuated  this  institution.  This 
fiction  of  sacramental  kinship  was  at  one  time  carried 
so  far  in  the  papal  Church  as  to  forbid  the  sponsor 
to  be  joined  in  wedlock  even  to  the  parent  of  a  god- 
child. Cohabitation  between  a  patrinus  and  a  matrina 
was  regarded  as  incest  until  the  Council  of  Trent  re- 
moved the  ecclesiastical  bar  to  such  unions.  The  fact 
that  they  had  assumed  the  position  of  spiritual  parents 
to  one  infant  prevented  them  from  becoming  the  real 
and  lawful  parents  of  another  infant.  The  importance 
attached  to  the  name-day,  which  in  most  Catholic  coun- 
tries quite  supplants  the  birthday  as  an  anniversary, 
is  also  additional  evidence  of  the  vigour  and  vitality 
of  primitive  conceptions  as  embodied  in  ecclesiastical 
institutions. 

Keligion  is,  in  fact,  as  Schelling  observes,  the  strong- 


BELIEF  AS  A  BASIS  OF  MORAL  OBLIGATION.   55 

est  cement  of  primitive  society,  and  the  influence  which 
contributes  more  than  any  other  to  the  evolution  and 
organization  of  the  nation  and  state  out  of  the  tribe. 
Plutarch  says:  "  Methinks  a  man  should  sooner  find 
a  city  built  in  the  air,  without  any  ground  to  rest  upon, 
than  that  any  commonwealth  altogether  void  of  re- 
ligion should  be  either  first  established  or  afterward 
preserved  and  maintained  in  that  estate.  For  it  is  this 
that  contains  and  holds  together  all  human  society  and 
is  its  main  prop  and  stay."  Hegel  expressed  the  same 
idea  when  he  asserted  that  "  the  idea  of  God  forms  the 
general  foundation  of  a  people."  Herbart  calls  atten- 
tion to  the  pedagogical  and  disciplinary  value  of  re- 
ligion in  the  early  stages  of  man's  development,  since 
it  teaches  him  to  subordinate  present  desires  to  future 
welfare,  to  look  to  the  remote  results  of  his  conduct, 
and  to  sacrifice  momentary  pleasures  here  to  perma- 
nent advantages  hereafter. 

But  the  ordinary  experiences  of  life,  especially  in 
a  cold  climate,  are  quite  as  effective  in  inculcating  thrift 
and  enforcing  the  first  elementary  principle  of  domestic 
and  political  economy — that  a  man  can  no",  eat  his  pud- 
ding and  keep  it  too.  Stress  of  hunger  emphasizes  the 
necessity  of  laying  up  stores  of  provisions  against  time 
of  need,  and  teaches  foresight  and  forehand  more  di- 
rectly and  more  forcibly  than  any  hypothetical  relation 
of  man  to  the  gods  could  do. 

Originally  the  tie  of  religion  must  have  been  iden- 
tical with  the  tie  of  relationship,  and  the  brotherhood 
of  belief  coextensive  with  the  brotherhood  of  blood, 
since  all  members  of  the  same  family  or  tribe  would 
naturally  adore  the  same  domestic  or  tribal  deities. 
Without  this  acceptance  of  the  tribal  theology  and 


56  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

traditions  by  every  individual  of  the  tribe,  the  public 
peace  would  be  constantly  disturbed  and  the  very  ex- 
istence of  primitive  society  imperilled. 

With  the  lapse  of  time  and  the  increase  of  intelli- 
gence, however,  vague  wonder  and  ignorant  worship 
would  give  place  in  more  thoughtful  minds  to  obstinate 
questionings,  blank  misgivings,  and  stubborn  scepti- 
cisms, leading  logically  and  inevitably  to  open  schisms, 
and  resulting  in  the  formation  of  new  communities  of 
faith,  crystallizing  around  the  nucleus  of  a  vital  re- 
ligious conviction.  It  was  then  proved,  what  all  later 
history  confirms,  that  spiritual  affinities  have  a  stronger 
cohesive  attraction  than  natural  affinities,  and  that,  in 
every  case  of  tension,  the  latter  are  sure  to  yield  and 
be  rent  asunder. 

Even  the  founder  of  Christianity,  who  professed  to 
proclaim  a  gospel  of  peace  on  earth  and  good  will  to 
man,  foresaw  and  did  not  hesitate  to  declare  that  this 
sundering  of  the  closest  consanguineous  connections  and 
division  of  families  into  hostile  factions  would  be  the 
necessary  consequence  of  his  teachings.  He  spoke  of 
his  doctrines  as  a  sword  destined  to  sever  the  nearest 
ties  of  natural  affection  and  affinity,  setting  the  son 
at  variance  against  the  father,  and  the  daughter  against 
the  mother,  and  converting  the  members  of  a  man's 
household  into  his  bitterest  foes. 

The  centre  of  cohesive  attraction,  which  binds  the 
new  community  so  firmly  together  and  so  relentlessly 
ruptures  all  older  associations,  is  the  creed,  or  what  is 
known  in  Christian  theology  as  the  symbol,  the  same 
term  that,  as  we  have  already  seen,  was  used  by  the 
Greeks  to  denote  the  token  or  pledge  of  hereditary  hos- 
pitality and  friendship  between  families,  which  fur- 


BELIEF  AS  A  BASIS  OF  MORAL  OBLIGATION.   57 

nished  a  basis  for  the  formation  of  treaties  of  amity 
and  commerce  between  tribes. 

Strictly  tribal  religions  never  proselytize.  Instead 
of  seeking  to  share  with  alien  tribes  the  favour  and 
protection  of  their  gods,  they  wish  to  monopolize  what- 
ever power  and  patronage  may  be  derived  from  this 
source  as  a  means  of  rendering  themselves  superior  to 
their  enemies.  This  was  the  case  with  the  ancient 
Hebrews,  who  never  thought  of  sending  missionaries 
into  other  lands  to  make  converts  to  Jehovah,  but  would 
have  condemned  such  a  procedure  as  treasonable.  It 
is  true  that  Jesus,  in  his  denunciation  of  the  Phari- 
sees, declared  that  they  "  compass  sea  and  land  to  make 
one  proselyte  "  ;  but  this  reproof  referred  to  their  zeal 
as  a  political  party  in  winning  adherents  among  their 
own  countrymen,  in  order  to  supplant  the  more  liberal- 
minded  and  less  rigidly  ritualistic  Sadducees  in  the 
Sanhedrin. 

Jesus  himself  evidently  never  intended  to  break 
away  from  Judaism  and  to  become  the  founder  of  a  new 
religion.  According  to  his  own  statement,  he  was  "  not 
sent  but  unto  the  lost  sheep  of  the  hou^e  of  Israel." 
His  mission  was  not  to  destroy,  but  to  falfil;  not  to 
abrogate,  but  to  accomplish  the  law.  He  sought  to 
give  a  spiritual  interpretation  to  ancient  precepts  and 
injunctions;  to  revivify  and  rehabilitate  the  moral  sen- 
timent, hitherto  dwarfed  and  deformed  under  the  heavy 
burden  of  a  perfunctory  ceremonialism;  and  to  enforce 
the  commandments  of  God  free  from  all  incrustations 
of  the  traditions  of  men. 

Curiously,  and  yet  naturally  enough,  it  was  out  of 
the  very  strictest  sect  of  the  Pharisees,  so  severely  re- 
buked on  account  of  their  proselytic  spirit,  that  the 


58  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

great  proselyte  Paul  came — the  man  whose  breadth  of 
view  and  energy  of  purpose  changed  a  local  reforma- 
tory movement,  which  seemed  to  have  been  practically 
suppressed  by  the  crucifixion,  into  a  world-wide  religion, 
by  emancipating  it  from  the  fetters  of  Mosaic  formal- 
ism, taking  it  out  of  the  narrow  ghetto  of  tribalism, 
and  imparting  to  it  a  universal  character.  In  this 
bold  effort  to  turn  apparent  disaster  into  permanent 
victory,  by  breaking  through  the  barriers  of  Judaism 
and  preaching  the  gospel  to  the  Gentiles,  he  met  with 
the  most  determined  opposition  from  the  near  kin  and 
personal  friends  of  Jesus,  as  well  as  from  the  principal 
disciples  in  Jerusalem. 

To  this  process  of  development — ^by  which  Chris- 
tianity, whose  "  field  is  the  world,"  rose  out  of  Judaism, 
the  special  cult  of  a  privileged  race — we  have  a  parallel 
in  the  historical  evolution  of  Buddhism,  as  a  religion 
of  pure  humanity  aspiring  to  universality,  out  of  the 
narrow  exclusiveness  of  Brahmanism  with  its  rigor- 
ous politico-ethnological  system  of  hereditary  caste. 

If,  however,  we  go  back  to  an  earlier  period,  we 
meet  with  a  most  striking  example  of  the  workings 
of  these  conflicting  forces  in  the  disintegration  and  re- 
construction of  old  Aryan  society,  thirty  centuries  ago, 
in  the  highlands  of  Bactria.  The  nature  of  this  epoch- 
making  movement,  which  took  place  as  the  result  of 
Zarathustra's  teachings  and  under  his  leadership,  and 
the  deep  and  enduring  enmity  it  excited  between  people 
of  the  same  blood,  are  perceptible  in  the  solemn  pledge 
or  confession  of  faith  by  which  the  proselyte  was  re- 
ceived into  the  fellowship  of  the  Iranian  community. 

This  remarkable  document,  written  in  the  ancient 
Gatha  dialect,  which  is  surmised  to  have  been  the  ver- 


BELIEF  AS  A  BASIS  OF   MORAL  OBLIGATION.   59 

nacular  of  Zarathustra's  native  province  and  the  mother- 
tongue  of  the  prophet,  begins  with  an  abjuration  of  the 
ancestral  deva  worship  and  a  vow  of  devotion  to  the 
glorious  and  munificent  Ahuramazda,  and  then  pro- 
ceeds to  a  renunciation  of  all  evil  works,  and  especially 
of  those  deeds  of  violence  peculiar  to  nomadic  free- 
booters: "  I  choose  the  beneficent  Armaiti  (earth),  the 
good.  May  she  be  mine!  I  detest  all  fraud  and  injury 
done  to  the  spirit  of  the  earth,  and  all  damage  and  de- 
struction to  the  homes  of  the  Mazdayasnians.  I  permit 
the  good  spirits,  which  dwell  on  the  earth  in  the  form 
of  good  animals  (such  as  sheep  and  kine),  to  roam  un- 
disturbed according  to  their  pleasure.  I  praise,  besides, 
all  offerings  and  prayers  to  promote  the  growth  of  life. 
I  will  never  do  harm  or  hurt  to  the  habitations  of  the 
Mazdayasnians,  neither  with  my  body  nor  with  my  soul. 
I  forsake  the  devas,  the  wicked  and  malicious  workers 
of  iniquity,  the  most  baneful,  most  malignant,  and 
basest  of  beings.  I  forsake  the  devas  and  their  like, 
the  wizards  and  their  allies,  and  all  creatures  whatso- 
ever of  such  kind.  I  forsake  them  in  thought,  in  word, 
and  in  deed.  I  forsake  them  hereby  publicly,  and  de- 
clare that  all  their  deceits  and  lies  shall  be  put  away.*' 
After  further  asseverations  in  the  same  strain,  and  after 
renouncing  anew  the  devas,  and  entering  into  covenant 
with  the  waters,  the  woods,  and  the  living  spirit  of  Na- 
ture, and  accepting  the  creed  of  the  fire-priests,  the  dif- 
fusers  of  light  and  of  truth,  the  convert  concludes  by 
avowing  himself  to  be  a  disciple  of  Zarathustra,  an 
adherent  of  the  pure  Ahuryan  religion,  and  a  member 
of  the  righteous  brotherhood.  Henceforth  he  is  a 
Bworn  foe  of  the  evil-doing,  ancestral  deities,  and  a 
zealous  co-worker  with  Ahuramazda  in  promoting  good 


60  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

thoughts,  good  words,  and  good  deeds — humata,  huklita, 
huvarshta. 

With  this  proclamation  of  a  purer  reHgion  the  pro- 
mulgation of  a  higher  law  of  social  life  and  a  superior 
form  of  civilization  was  genetically  connected — ^namely, 
the  sacred  duty  of  fostering  and  gladdening  the  spirit 
of  the  earth  (personified  as  the  goddess  or  angel  Ar- 
maiti),  by  tilling  the  soil  and  making  it  fruitful.  Hus- 
bandry is  holiness  to  the  Lord.  In  the  third  fargard 
of  the  Vendidad  this  conception  of  agriculture  as  a 
sacred  calling  is  particularly  enlarged  upon  and  en- 
forced. The  earth  is  there  compared  to  a  beautiful 
woman,  who  fails  to  fulfil  her  noblest  functions  so  long 
as  she  remains  virgin  and  barren.  "  He  who  cultivates 
barley  cultivates  righteousness,  and  extends  the  Maz- 
dayasnian  religion  as  much  as  though  he  resisted  a 
thousand  demons,  made  a  thousand  offerings,  or  recited 
a  thousand  prayers."  Indeed,  the  best  way  to  fight 
evil  spirits  is  to  redeem  the  waste  places  which  they  are 
supposed  to  inhabit.  The  spade  and  the  plough  are  more 
effective  than  magic  spells  and  incantations  as  means 
of  exorcism.  An  old  Avestan  verse,  which  is  quoted 
in  inculcation  and  encouragement  of  tillage,  and  may 
have  been  sung  by  Iranian  husbandmen  as  they  sowed 
the  seed  and  reaped  the  harvest,  celebrates  the  influ- 
ence and  efficacy  of  their  toil  in  discomfiting  and  driv- 
ing out  devils: 

The  demons  hiss  when  the  barley's  green, 
The  demons  moan  at  the  thrashing's  sound ; 
The  demons  roar  as  the  grist  is  ground, 

The  demons  flee  when  the  flour  is  seen. 

[These  lines  have  also  in  the  original  a  sort  of  rude 
rhyme  or  assonance  peculiar  to  ancient  poetry: 


BELIEF  AS  A  BASIS  OF  MORAL  OBLIGATION.   61 

Yadh  yav6  daydt  &at  da6va  gls'en, 
Yadh  s''udhus  day4t  4at  da^va  tus'en ; 
Yadh  pistro  day&t  ^t  da^va  uruthen, 
Yadh  gundS  daydt  Aat  da^va  perethen. 

VendidM,  iii,  105-108,  Spiegel's  ed]. 

If  the  Mazdayasnian  religion,  as  revealed  in  the 
Avesta,  illustrated  in  a  remarkable  manner  the  Bene- 
dictine maxim  lahorare  est  orare,  it  had  no  sympathy 
with  the  melancholy  salutation  memento  mori,  with 
which  the  Trappist  greets  the  members  of  his  silent 
brotherhood.  As  taught  by  the  Iranian  prophet  and 
still  practised  by  the  modern  Parsis,  it  is  pre-eminently 
a  religion  of  thrift,  and  enjoins  as  a  sacred  duty  the 
honest  accumulation  and  hearty  enjoyment  of  wealth. 
Poverty  and  asceticism  have  no  place  in  its  list  of  vir- 
tues. Voluntary  abstinence  from  the  pleasurable 
things  of  the  good  creation  is  an  act  of  base  ingrati- 
tude and  treason  toward  the  bountiful  giver  of  them. 
He  who  despises  them  is  a  contemner  of  Ahuramazda 
and  an  ally  of  the  devas,  and  contributes  thus  far  to  the 
triumph  of  evil  in  the  world.  The  righteous  man 
should  not  dwell  upon  the  idea  of  death,  but  banish  it 
from  his  thoughts  and  earnestly  strive  after  the  realiza- 
tion of  a  fuller  and  richer  life.  It  is  the  height  of  folly 
to  suppose  that  mortifications  of  the  flesh  can  further 
spiritual  growth.  Whatever  fosters  the  health  of  the 
body  favours  the  health  of  the  soul;  but  the  emaciation 
of  the  body  impoverishes  the  soul.  The  notion  which 
underlies  what  is  known  as  "muscular  Christianity" 
pervades  the  entire  Avesta  and  finds  a  na'ive  and  pithy 
expression  in  the  following  text  of  the  Vendidad,  which 
the  tiller  of  the  soil  is  directed  always  to  bear  in  mind 
and  frequently  to  repeat: 


62  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

Who  eateth  not  for  naught  hath  strength, 
No  strength  for  robust  purity, 
No  strength  for  robust  husbandry, 
No  strength  for  getting  robust  sons. 

[Here,  too,  we  have  a  bit  of  old  poetry  passed  into 
a  proverb.  In  the  original  the  only  trace  of  rhyme 
(and  this  we  have  preserved  in  the  rendering)  is 
the  assonance  of  the  second  and  third  lines: 

Na^chis  aquarentam  tva, 
■  N6it  ughrdm  ashyam, 
N6it  ughram  vas'tryam, 
N6it  ughrdm  putroist^m. 

VendidM,  iii,  113-115. 

The  editorial  bracketing  of  the  last  line  by  Prof. 
Spiegel,  as  a  possible  interpolation,  indicates  an  excess 
of  critical  suspicion,  since  this  line  not  only  fills  out 
the  verse,  but  also  finishes  up  the  thought,  rounding 
and  completing  the  expression  of  the  sentiment  with 
a  climax.] 

In  another  passage  Ahuramazda  declares:  "Verily 
I  say  unto  thee,  0  Spitama  Zarathustra!  the  man  who 
has  a  wife  is  far  above  him  who  begets  no  sons;  he 
who  has  a  household  is  far  above  him  who  has  none; 
he  who  has  children  is  far  above  the  childless  man;  he 
who  has  riches  is  far  above  him  who  is  destitute  of  them. 
And  of  two  men,  the  one  who  fills  himself  with  meat 
is  filled  with  the  good  spirit  (vohu  mano)  much  more 
than  he  who  goes  hungry;  the  latter  is  all  but  dead; 
the  former  is  above  him  by  the  worth  of  a  kid  (as'pe- 
rena),  by  the  worth  of  a  sheep,  by  the  worth  of  an  ox, 
by  the  worth  of  a  man.  [As'perenay  usually  rendered 
weight  or  coin,  is  derived  from  a  +  s'par,  and  means 
not  walking  or  not  grown,  a  young  animal,  a  kid  or  a 


BELIEF  AS  A  BASIS  OF  MORAL  OBLIGATION.   63 

lamb.  Cf.  Sanskrit  spliar  or  spliur,  to  expand  or  to 
swell.]  Such  a  person  can  resist  the  onsets  of  As'to- 
vidhotus  (the  demon  of  death);  can  resist  the  self- 
moving  arrow;  can  resist  the  winter  fiend,  even  though 
thinly  clad;  can  resist  and  smite  the  wicked  tyrant; 
can  resist  the  assaults  of  the  ungodly  Ashemaogho  (the 
destroyer  of  purity)  who  does  not  eat."  (Vend,  iv, 
130-141.) 

According  to  Herodotus  (i,  136),  the  Persian  king 
gave  prizes  to  those  of  his  subjects  who  had  the  great- 
est number  of  children.  Vigorous  procreation  was  one 
of  the  most  effectual  means  of  grace.  It  is  stated  in  the 
Sad-dar  that  "to  him  who  has  no  child,  the  Chinvad 
bridge  (leading  to  paradise)  shall  be  barred.  The  first 
question  the  angels  who  guard  this  narrow  passage 
will  ask  him  is  whether  he  has  left  in  this  world  a  like- 
ness of  himself;  if  he  answers  in  the  negative,  they 
will  leave  him  standing  at  the  head  of  the  bridge,  full 
of  sorrow  and  despair."  In  the  same  work  that  con- 
tains this  piece  of  eschatology  it  is  also  written: 
"  There  are  those  who  strive  to  pass  a  day  without 
eating  and  who  abstain  from  meat;  we,  ioo,  have  our 
strivings  and  abstainings,  namely,  from  evil  thoughts, 
and  evil  words,  and  evil  deeds.  Other  religions  pre- 
scribe fasting  from  bread;  ours  enjoins  fasting  from 
sin." 

The  Brahmans  maintained  that  the  man  who  died 
without  a  son  went  to  perdition,  because  there  was  no 
one  to  pay  him  the  traditional  family  worship;  hence 
the  necessity  of  adopting  a  son  in  case  he  had  none 
of  his  own.  The  Levitical  law,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
compelled  a  man  to  take  the  wife  of  a  deceased  brother, 
who  died  childless,  and  raise  up  seed  to  him.    In  the 


64  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

Persian  Rivayats,  or  collections  of  traditions,  similar 
inatrimonial  prescriptions  are  given.  Thus,  if  a  man 
over  fifteen  years  of  age  dies  childless  and  unmarried, 
his  relations  are  to  provide  a  maiden  with  a  dowry  and 
marry  her  to  another  man.  Half  of  the  children  result- 
ing from  this  union  are  to  belong  to  the  dead  man  and 
half  of  them  to  his  proxy,  the  actual  husband,  and  she 
herself  is  to  be  the  dead  man's  wife  in  the  next  world. 
This  kind  of  wife  is  called  satar,  "  adopted."  Again, 
if  a  widow,  who  has  no  children  by  her  first  husband, 
marries  again,  half  of  her  children  by  the  second  hus- 
band are  regarded  as  belonging  to  the  first  husband, 
and  she  also  belongs  to  him  in  the  future  life;  such 
a  wife  is  called  cJiakar,  "  serving."  The  first  child  of 
an  only  daughter  belongs  to  her  parents,  if  they  have 
no  sons,  and  they  give  her  one  third  of  their  property 
in  compensation.  This  kind  of  wife  is  called  yukan, 
or  "  only  child  "  wife.  (Dr.  E.  W.  West,  Pahlavi  Texts, 
in  The  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  v,  p.  143.)  All 
these  laws  and  customs  show  the  vital  importance  at- 
tached to  the  possession  of  male  offspring  and  to  the 
preservation  of  an  unbroken  succession  in  the  line  of 
descent. 

There  are  strong  indications  that  the  transition  from 
pastoral  to  agricultural  life  in  old  Aryan  society  pre- 
ceded the  transformation  of  religious  conceptions,  and 
that  the  latter  grew  up  gradually  as  a  means  of  con- 
centrating and  more  completely  consolidating  the 
former.  In  the  second  fargard  of  the  Vendidad  a 
curious  account  is  given  of  Yima,  who  lived  before 
Zarathustra  and  is  spoken  of  as  a  king  rich  in  herds 
and  a  man  of  renown  in  Airyana-Vaejo,  the  Eden  of 
the  race.    It  was  this  exalted  personage  whom  Ahura- 


BELIEF  AS  A  BASIS  OF  MORAL  OBLIGATION.   65 

mazda  is  said  to  have  first  chosen  to  be  the  promul- 
gator of  the  true  faith.  But  Yima,  the  son  of  Vivangh- 
aiit  (a  name  derived  perhaps  from  vangh,  to  dwell  or 
abide,  and  meaning  settler  or  dweller  in  fixed  habita- 
tions), excused  himself,  on  the  plea  of  unfitness  for 
the  prophetic  ofiice.  He  may  have  been,  like  Moses, 
a  man  of  deeds  rather  than  of  words,  "  slow  of  speech 
and  of  a  slow  tongue."  Then  said  Ahuramazda,  "  If 
thou  wilt  not  be  the  bearer  and  herald  of  the  faith,  then 
shalt  thou  inclose  my  habitations  and  become  the  pro- 
tector and  preserver  of  my  settlements."  Thereupon 
he  gave  him  a  golden  ploughshare  and  a  goad  decorated 
with  gold  as  insignia  of  his  royal  office.  [The  word 
s'ufra  I  prefer  to  translate  "  ploughshare  "  rather  than 
"sword"  with  Haug,  or  "lance"  with  Spiegel.  It 
means  literally  a  cutting  instrument.  In  the  Avesta, 
ploughing  is  called  "  cutting  the  cow "  ;  and  in  the 
Vedic  hymns  the  phrase  "cut  the  cow"  is  equivalent 
to  "  make  fertile  the  earth."  "  The  soul  of  the  cow  " 
(geush  urvd)  means  the  spirit  of  the  earth  or  the  ani- 
mating energy  of  Nature.  In  the  Pahlavi  translation 
of  this  passage  s'ufra  is  rendered  by  sulak-homandy 
"  having  holes  "  or  "  sieve,"  and  might  therefore  cor- 
respond to  the  Sanskrit  s'urpa,  "  winnowing  tray." 
The  Paiilavi  for  ploughshare  is  suldk,  and  the  close 
resemblance  of  this  word  to  sulak,  "hole,"  modern 
Persian  suldhh  and  surakli,  may  have  led  to  a  confusion 
and  interchange  of  terms,  both  of  which  involve  the 
idea  of  piercing  or  perforating.] 

And  Yima  bore  sw^ay  three  hundred  years;  and 
the  land  "  was  filled  with  cattle,  oxen,  men,  dogs,  birds, 
and  red  blazing  fires,"  until  there  was  no  more  room 
for  them  therein.     Then  Yima  went  southward  (lit- 


66  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

erally,  "toward  the  stars  on  the  noonday  path  of  the 
sun  ")y  and,  invoking  the  bounteous  Armaiti,  touched 
the  earth  with  the  golden  ploughshare  and  pierced 
it  with  the  goad;  and,  in  obedience  to  his  behest,  the 
earth  expanded  and  became  one  third  larger  than  be- 
fore. This  process  he  repeated,  according  to  the  Zand, 
after  six  hundred  years  and  again  after  nine  hundred 
years,  with  a  constantly  increasing  extension  of  the 
earth,  which  finally  became  about  thrice  its  original 
size,  and  thus  afforded  ample  space  for  men  and  kine. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  discover  the  meaning  of  this 
legend.  It  is  the  mythical  statement  of  the  effect  of 
agriculture  in  practically  enlarging  the  surface  of  the 
earth  by  increasing  its  capacity  for  supporting  animal 
life,  and  thus  rendering  it  possible  for  a  greater  num- 
ber of  persons  to  subsist  on  the  products  of  the  same 
area  of  soil.  A  tract  of  country  which  would  furnish 
precarious  food  for  a  single  hunter,  or  pasturage  for  a 
score  of  herdsmen,  would,  even  under  rude  tillage, 
easily  supply  sustenance  for  a  hundred  husbandmen. 
Indeed,  it  has  been  estimated  that  one  acre  of  arable 
land  will  bring  forth  as  much  food  and  consequently 
sustain  as  many  inhabitants  as  two  thousand  acres  of 
hunting  ground. 

In  the  fulness  of  time  Yima  was  succeeded  by  the 
man  who,  like  Aaron,  could  "  speak  well,'^  and  in  the 
first  Gatha  we  find  an  address  which  Zarathustra  de- 
livered to  his  countrymen  congregated  around  the 
sacred  fire.  It  begins  as  follows:  "I  will  now  reveal 
to  you  who  are  here  assembled  the  wise  words  of  Mazda, 
the  worship  of  Ahura,  the  hymns  in  praise  of  the  good 
spirit,  the  sublime  truth,  which  I  see  rising  out  of  the 
sacred  flames."    He  then  appeals  to  them  as  the  "off- 


BELIEF  AS  A  BASIS  OF  MORAL  OBLIGATION.   67 

spring  of  renowned  ancestors"  to  rouse  their  minds 
and  give  heed  to  his  divine  message :  "  To-day,  0  men 
and  women,  you  should  choose  your  creed." 

After  this  brief  exordium,  he  plunges  at  once  into 
his  subject  and  offers  his  solution  of  the  old  and  ever- 
puzzling  problem  of  good  and  evil,  which  he  personi- 
fies as  twin  spirits,  counter-workers  in  the  creation  of 
the  world,  each  exercising  its  peculiar  activity  and  con- 
tributing its  characteristic  element,  and  promoting  re- 
spectively the  happiness  and  the  misery  of  mankind. 
It  may  also  be  safely  asserted  that,  from  a  theistic  point 
of  view,  no  more  logical  and  satisfactory  solution  of 
the  difficulty  has  ever  been  presented.  He  earnestly 
exhorts  his  hearers  to  follow  after  the  good  and  to 
eschew  the  evil.  '*^  Choose  between  these  two  spirits, 
for  ye  can  not  serve  both."  "  Be  pure  and  not  vile." 
"  Let  us  be  such  as  help  the  life  of  the  future."  "  Obey, 
therefore,  the  commandments  which  Mazda  has  pro- 
claimed and  enjoined  upon  mankind;  for  they  are  a 
snare  and  perdition  to  liars,  but  prosperity  to  the  be- 
liever in  the  truth  and  the  source  of  all  bliss." 

The  whole  aim  of  this  discourse,  of  which  these 
extracts  suffice  to  indicate  the  drift,  is  to  persuade  his 
hearers  to  renounce  or  to  confirm  them  in  their  re- 
nunciation of  the  old  Aryan  polytheism  and  worship 
of  the  devas,  as  we  find  it  in  the  Vedas,  and  to  adopt 
monotheism  or  the  adoration  of  the  one  great  and  good 
but  by  no  means  omnipotent  being,  Ahuramazda.  As 
a  philosophical  system,  his  doctrine  was  dualistic  and 
recognised  the  existence  of  two  original  and  independ- 
ent principles  in  the  universe;  as  a  cult,  it  was  mono- 
theolatrous  and  worshipped  only  one  of  these  powers. 

It  may  be  added  that  long  before  the  close  of  the 


68  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

Vedic  period  the  Indo- Aryans  had  also  begun  to  devote 
themselves  to  husbandry,  although  their  chief  wealth 
still  consisted  in  herds.  The  burden  of  their  hymns 
and  prayers  to  the  gods  is  for  much  cattle  and  a  large 
family  of  vigorous  sons.  The  foes  which  they  now  had 
mostly  to  contend  with  were  the  Dasyus  or  aborigines 
of  India.  The  occasional  mention  of  Aryan  enemies 
may  be  partly  reminiscences  or  records  of  an  earlier 
time  and  partly  references  to  intertribal  warfares,  of 
which  there  was  evidently  no  lack.  It  must  be  borne 
in  mind  that  all  the  Vedic  hymns  appear  to  have  been 
composed  in  northern  India,  and  principally  in  the 
region  now  kown  as  the  Panjab.  In  none  of  these 
poetical  productions  do  we  find  any  distinct  remem- 
brance of  a  trans-Himalayan  origin  or  any  definite 
allusion  to  a  former  residence  outside  of  India.  This 
circumstance  proves  that  at  the  time  of  the  supposed 
migration  from  the  North  the  ancestors  of  the  Indo- 
Aryans  must  have  been  rude  barbarians,  destitute  not 
only  of  written  records,  but  also  of  the  ability  to  pre- 
serve and  transmit  from  generation  to  generation  tra- 
ditions of  great  events  in  their  own  tribal  or  national 
history.  The  savage  has  a  short  memory  for  whatever 
lies  beyond  the  sphere  of  his  individual  experience. 

One  of  Zarathustra's  chief  injunctions  was  to  "  listen 
to  the  soul  of  the  earth,"  and  to  "  succour  and  foster 
the  life  of  Nature."  This  is  to  be  done  by  cultivating 
and  fertilizing  the  soil;  since  the  increase  of  its  pro- 
ductivity augments  the  sum  of  vitality  in  the  world 
and  contributes  to  the  ascendency  of  the  voJiumano  or 
good  mind,  synonymous  with  vis  vitalis  or  living  force, 
and  aids  in  securing  the  supremacy  of  Ahuramazda. 
Instead  of  bowing  down  in  servile  fear  before  the  phe- 


BELIEF  AS  A  BASIS  OF  MORAL  OBLIGATION.   69 

nomena  of  Nature,  the  Mazdayasnians  are  directed  to 
revere  and  cherish  her  kindly  and  beneficent  spirit, 
so  that  "  the  wilderness  and  the  solitary  place  shall 
be  glad  for  them,  and  the  desert  shall  rejoice  and  blos- 
som as  the  rose/' 

Angro-Mainyush  and  his  satellites,  the  devas,  on 
the  other  hand,  are  constantly  striving  to  resist  and 
to  thwart  this  purpose  and  to  keep  the  earth  in  her 
native  state  of  virginal  wildness  and  ruggedness  by 
investing  her  with  the  dread  sanctities  and  supersti- 
tions of  a  crude  polytheistic  physiolatry,  by  assaulting 
and  ravaging  the  cultivated  settlements  of  the  Ahuryan 
agriculturists,  and  by  fomenting  and  fostering  the  spirit 
of  primeval  savagery,  personified  as  Akemmano,  or  the 
evil  mind.  In  the  sacred  books  and  traditions  of  both 
factions,  and  more  especially  in  those  of  the  reforma- 
tory party,  are  frequent  traces  of  this  social  rupture 
and  religious  schism,  and  of  the  deadly  hostility  natu- 
rally existing  between  nomadic  hordes,  that  still  ad- 
here to  a  life  of  pasturage  and  pillage,  and  men  of  more 
advanced  ideas,  who  dwell  in  fixed  habitations  (gaethas) 
and  devote  themselves  to  husbandry. 

I  am  well  aware  that  M.  James  Darmesteter  and 
other  representatives  of  what  might  be  called  the 
meteorological  school  of  Avestan  scholars  deny  the 
historical  reality  of  a  religious  schism  of  the  kind  here 
described,  and  would  reduce  Zarathustra  and  all  the  in- 
cidents of  his  life  to  a  series  of  solar  myths.  It  is,  how- 
ever, only  on  the  theory  of  a  religious  schism  that  the 
fact  that  the  deities  of  Brahmanism  are  the  devils  of 
Zoroastrianism,  and  vice  versa,  can  be  adequately  ex- 
plained. To  assert  that  this  antagonism  is  the  result  of 
an  "  accidental  selection  "  of  gods  is  no  explanation  at 


70  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

all.  The  religious  history  of  mankind  is  not  a  record  of 
casualties  or  mere  chapter  of  accidents. 

Besides,  we  have  a  modern  example  of  a  similar 
enmity  growing  out  of  the  transition  from  nomadic  to 
sedentary  life  in  the  mythology  of  the  Dards,  who  are, 
perhaps,  one  of  the  oldest  races  and  most  primitive 
peoples  of  the  East,  and  who  believe  in  the  existence 
of  demons  called  yatsli  (had),  which,  like  the  Homeric 
Cyclops  (the  barbarous  aborigines  of  the  Sicilian  coast), 
are  of  gigantic  stature,  and  have  only  one  eye,  set  in 
the  middle  of  their  forehead.  These  demons  haunt 
the  mountains  and  the  wilderness,  and  are  exceed- 
ingly hostile  to  agriculturists,  whom  they  vex  and  harm 
in  every  possible  manner,  stealing  and  destroying  the 
crops,  and  even  carrying  off  the  husbandmen  to  their 
gloomy  caverns.  In  this  scrap  of  mythology  we  have 
the  survival  of  the  old  strife  between  barbarism  and 
civilization,  which  began  with  man's  first  efforts  to 
improve  his  condition. 

The  barbarian  is,  in  fact,  the  most  uncompromising 
incarnation  and  typical  representative  of  conservatism; 
and  it  is  the  survival  of  the  barbarian  temper  of  mind 
that  constantly  hampers  progress  and  hinders  reform 
in  modern  times.  His  daily  life  is  the  dullest  routine 
and  would  be  unbearable,  were  it  not  the  outcome  and 
expression  of  the  general  rigidity  and  sterility  of  his 
intellect.  He  treads  religiously  in  the  footsteps  of  his 
forefathers,  generation  after  generation,  the  whole 
mass  moving  on  bodily  and  mentally  in  single  file,  as  is 
the  custom  with  savages.  He  is  the  stubborn  foe  of 
all  innovations,  and  punishes  as  treason  against  the 
tribe  every  deviation  from  the  beaten  trail.  Under 
such  circumstances  no  social  transformation  can  be  ef- 


BELIEF  AS  A  BASIS  OF  MORAL  OBLIGATION,   71 

fected  without  fierce  battle  and  bloodshed.  In  the 
primitive  history  of  mankind,  as  in  the  early  physical 
history  of  the  globe,  great  changes  are  uniformly  the 
result  of  great  convulsions. 

It  is  not  merely  the  love  of  booty  that  leads  nomadic 
tribes  to  attack  and  lay  waste  the  permanent  settlements 
of  husbandmen,  but  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  re- 
sisting the  encroachments  of  a  new  form  of  social  or- 
ganization which  imperils  the  old.  For  this  reason 
hunters  are  hostile  to  herdsmen,  and  herdsmen  to  tillers 
of  the  soil;  since  pasturage  diminishes  the  extent  and 
value  of  hunting  grounds,  and  agriculture  diminishes 
the  area  of  pasturage. 

Mr.  D.  Mackenzie  Wallace  gives  a  striking  illustra- 
tion of  this  antagonism  in  the  history  of  the  Cossacks 
of  the  Don,  who,  so  long  as  they  lived  by  sheep-farming 
and  marauding,  prohibited  agriculture  under  pain  of 
death.  This  severe  interdict  of  a  peaceful  pursuit  origi- 
nated, not  as  some  have  supposed  in  the  desire  to  foster 
the  warlike  spirit  of  the  people,  but  rather  in  a  percep- 
tion of  the  fact  that  "  the  man  who  ploughed  up  a  bit 
of  land  infringed  thereby  on  his  neighbour's  right  of 
pasturage.^'  By  this  act  he  became  in  a  certain  sense 
guilty  of  treason  against  pastoral  society,  the  very  foun- 
dations of  which,  the  green  sod,  he  broke  up  and  de- 
stroyed with  his  ploughshare.  He  not  only  restricted 
and  reduced  the  actual  area  of  grazing,  but  also  struck 
a  blow  at  the  life  of  a  cattle-rearing  community.  The 
practical  workings  of  this  crude  and  clannish  concep- 
tion of  patriotism  are  recorded,  as  Mr.  Wallace  observes, 
on  the  pages  of  Byzantine  annalists  and  old  Eussian 
chroniclers,  who  describe  the  periodical  havoc  of  farm- 
steads committed  by  the  nomadic  tribes  which  from 


72  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

time  immemorial  had  roamed  the  vast  plains  north  of 
the  Black  and  Caspian  Seas,  razing  the  houses,  ravaging 
the  fields,  and  leaving  the  bodies  of  the  husbandmen 
as  food  for  vultures. 

The  roving  Bedouins,  dwellers  in  the  desert,  as  their 
name  implies,  despise  the  cultivators  of  the  soil  and 
call  them  contemptuously  fellahin  (ploughers,  boors); 
and  their  kinsmen  the  Anasis  {andsi,  men)  hover  on 
the  borders  and  levy  blackmail  on  the  villages  of 
Syria.  It  is  also  significant  for  the  persistency  of  this 
primitive  point  of  view  that  the  Arabic  word  for  agri- 
culture (faldhat),  should  also  mean  "  fraudulent  traffic," 
as  though  the  permanent  possession  of  a  piece  of  land 
and  the  exclusive  use  or  sale  of  the  products  of  the 
soil  were  in  themselves  swindling  operations. 

These  facts  of  to-day  suffice  to  show  the  kind  of 
opposition  which  Zarathustra  had  to  face  in  his  efforts 
to  establish  the  Iranians  in  fixed  settlements  and  to 
accustom  them  to  the  acquisition  and  proper  utiliza- 
tion of  landed  property.  In  order  to  accomplish  this 
purpose  it  was  necessary  to  teach  the  holiness  of  hus- 
bandry and  to  invest  seedtime  and  harvest  with  the 
sanctity  of  religion. 

The  Mormons,  after  their  migration  to  Salt  Lake, 
where  the  very  existence  of  the  conmiunity  depended 
upon  converting  the  desert  into  a  garden,  inaugurated 
the  same  policy,  declaring  through  the  mouth  of  their 
prophet  that  the  human  race  could  be  redeemed  and 
paradise  regained  only  by  means  of  tillage  and  making 
agriculture  a  sacred  vocation  and  the  pursuit  of  it  a 
prominent  part  of  their  creed. 

The  priests  of  the  old  deva  cult,  the  progenitors 
of  the  Brahmans,  on  the  other  hand,  denounced  Zara- 


BELIEF  AS  A  BASIS  OF  MORAL  OBLIGATION.   ^3 

thustra  as  a  schismatic  and  a  renegade,  a  contemner 
of  the  gods  and  blasphemer,  a  scorner  of  ancient  cus- 
tom and  subverter  of  social  order.  They  therefore 
opposed  the  innovation  and  fought  for  the  faith  of  their 
fathers  with  such  clumsy  weapons  as  they  were  most 
skilled  in  wielding,  looting  the  homesteads,  uprooting 
and  trampling  down  the  green  blades  of  wheat  and 
barley,  which  stood  as  representatives  of  the  growing 
heresy,  and,  with  a  logic  peculiar  to  theological  zealots 
and  ecclesiastical  inquisitors  in  all  ages,  refuting  the 
new  doctrine  and  resisting  the  reformatory  movement 
by  greater  energy  and  assiduity  in  the  ancient  and 
honourable  calling  of  cattle-lifting. 

As  we  have  already  seen,  the  duty  of  a  man  to 
shield  and  sustain  a  tribesman  against  an  alien  under 
all  circumstances  is  imperative.  Acts  of  extortion, 
treachery,  or  violence,  which  would  be  punished  by 
death  if  committed  against  a  member  of  the  same  tribe, 
are  regarded  as  indifferent  or  laudable  when  the  in- 
jured person  is  a  foreigner.  The  same  tendency  to 
approve  or  to  extenuate  the  bad  conduct  of  "  brethren  " 
enters  also  more  or  less  into  the  ethics  of  all  communi- 
ties or  collective  bodies  which  are  held  together  by  the 
bond  of  belief. 

All  people  in  a  low  state  of  civilization  have  a  strong 
prejudice  against  lending  money  on  interest,  and  look 
upon  all  such  transactions  as  sinful.  The  same  notion 
still  prevails  among  the  lower  classes  of  civilized  nations, 
whose  superstitions  are  in  most  cases  mere  survivals  of 
savage  life.  So  strong  is  this  feeling,  inculcated  and 
consecrated  by  religious  teachings  and  traditions,  that 
a  certain  stigma  attaches  to  the  money  broker  even  in 
the  minds  of  otherwise  intelligent  persons.     "Many 


74  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

lend  money  on  interest/'  says  Cato,  "but  it  is  not 
honourable  to  do  so.  Our  ancestors  enacted  in  their 
laws  that  the  thief  should  restore  twofold,  but  the 
taker  of  interest  fourfold,  from  which  we  see  how  much 
worse  a  usurer  was  thought  to  be  than  a  thief." 

In  general,  however,  usury,  like  every  other  sup- 
posed crime,  was  regarded  as  wrong  only  when  applied 
to  kindred  or  tribesmen.  The  Jews  were  forbidden 
to  "  take  a  breed  of  barren  metal "  from  those  of  their 
own  faith,  but  might  exact  it  from  Gentiles.  Curious- 
ly enough,  in  the  middle  ages  this  privilege  was  granted 
to  the  Jews,  not  in  the  spirit  of  favouritism,  but  as  a 
necessity  to  sovereigns  and  to  society  and  from  feelings 
of  utter  scorn  and  contempt.  As  neither  government 
nor  trade  could  do  without  this  vilely  esteemed  voca- 
tion, the  Jews  were  selected  to  carry  it  on,  because 
they  were  considered  a  vile  people  incapable  alike  of 
improvement  or  of  deeper  degradation.  The  state  and 
the  Church,  which  felt  an  interest  in  the  spiritual  wel- 
fare and  safety  of  the  Christian,  were  wholly  indif- 
ferent to  the  future  fate  of  the  Jew.  That  sweet  saint, 
Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  surnamed  the  honey-flowing 
teacher  {doctor  mellifluus),  urged  the  rulers  of  his  day 
to  tolerate  the  Jews,  not  because  he  hated  persecution, 
but  in  order  that  Christians  might  not  be  constrained 
to  imperil  the  salvation  of  their  souls  by  the  sin  of 
usury.  The  Israelitic  pariahs  of  mediaeval  society 
rendered  the  same  service  to  Christian  virtue  that  pro- 
fessional prostitutes  do  to  female  chastity.  We  have 
a  striking  illustration  of  this  point  of  view  in  a  decree 
issued  in  1219,  by  the  German  emperor  Frederick  III, 
permitting  the  Jews  to  dwell  in  Nuremberg  and  to  take 
a  percentage  for  the  use  of  money.    Inasmuch  as  this 


BELIEF  AS  A  BASIS  OF  MORAL  OBLIGATION.   75 

business,  he  said  in  justification  of  his  edict,  is  essential 
to  the  growth  of  commerce  and  the  prosperity  of  the 
city,  it  will  be  a  lesser  evil  and  wrong  for  Jews  to  prac- 
tise usury  than  for  Christians,  since  the  former  are  a 
stubborn  and  stiffnecked  race,  and,  if  they  persist  in 
their  perversity,  as  they  probably  will  do,  are  doomed 
to  be  damned  anyhow.*  We  have  a  relic  of  this  primi- 
tive prejudice  in  the  efforts  of  modern  governments 
to  establish  a  fixed  rate  of  interest  for  the  use  of  money 
and  to  punish  as  usury  any  higher  compensation  for  it. 
All  such  attempts  have  uniformly  proved  to  be  not  only 
futile,  but  also  productive  of  evil  to  both  borrower  and 
lender,  and  especially  to  the  former;  and  as  the  result 
of  more  enlightened  views  of  financial  and  economical 
science  they  are  gradually  sharing  the  fate  of  sumptu- 
ary laws  and  similar  regulations  and  disappearing  from 
the  statute  books.  The  value  of  money,  like  that  of  any 
other  marketable  commodity,  can  not  be  positively  pre- 
scribed by  legislative  enactments,  but  must  be  deter- 
mined by  the  natural  law  of  supply  and  demand. 

The  Hebrew,  on  the  other  hand,  heartily  recipro- 
cated the  Christian's  contumely,  and  coul  1  hardly  con- 
ceal, under  the  prudent  disguise  of  mock  humility,  his 
disdain  for  the  upstart  Nazarene.  He  not  only  deemed 
it  a  religious  duty  to  cheat  him  in  money  matters,  but 
thought  it  perfectly  right  to  use  him  as  an  agent  in 
base  or  criminal  transactions  which  a  good  Israelite 
could  not  conscientiously  perform. 

This  mental  and  moral  attitude,  which  even  the 

*  We  have  referred  to  this  characteristic  decree  in  a  work  en- 
titled Animal  Symbolism  in  Ecclesiastical  Architecture  (London : 
William  Heinemann ;  New  York :  Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  1896,  p.  393) 
for  the  purpose  of  illustrating  another  subject. 
Q 


'76  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

modem  Hebrew  still  maintains,  is  strikingly  exempli- 
fied by  the  following  incident:  Between  1820  and  1830 
a  band  of  burglars,  numbering  over  one  hundred  per- 
sons and  consisting  entirely  of  Jews,  made  property 
so  unsafe  as  to  create  a  panic  among  the  inhabitants 
of  the  Prussian  provinces  of  Posen  and  Brandenburg. 
The  chief  of  the  band  was  a  certain  Loewenthal  in  Ber- 
lin, and  all  the  members  of  it  were  extremely  devout 
attendants  of  the  synagogue  and  strict  observers  of 
every  jot  and  tittle  of  the  Levitical  law.  They  never 
broke  into  the  houses  of  Jews  and  never  stole  on  the 
Sabbath,  since  such  an  act  would  be  a  desecration  of 
the  sacred  "  day  of  rest "  ;  but,  rather  than  let  an  ex- 
ceptionably  favourable  opportunity  escape,  they  some- 
times employed  a  so-called  schahbesgo'i  [schabhesgo'i  (Sab- 
bath-Gentile) is  a  Jew-German  term  for  the  Christian 
attendant  or  servant  who  does  for  an  Israelite  on  the 
Sabbath  the  things  which  his  religion  forbids  him  to 
do  for  himself]  to  commit  the  crime  for  them,  and, 
if  necessary,  did  not  hesitate  to  have  some  one  of  their 
own  number  accompany  him  on  his  burglarious  ex- 
pedition a  couple  of  thousand  yards  or  so,  the  limits 
of  a  Sabbath  day's  journey.  In  case  one  of  the  band 
was  suspected  of  any  particular  offence  and  arrested, 
the  surest  and  speediest  way  of  clearing  himself  was 
to  prove  an  alibi  by  the  testimony  of  two  witnesses, 
as  the  law  required.  But  the  pious  Hebrew  regards 
perjury  with  peculiar  abhorrence,  and  fears  above  all 
things  to  take  a  false  oath.  Shylock  was  eager  to  cut 
the  heart  out  of  his  hated  enemy,  but  he  would  not 
lay  perjury  upon  his  soul — no,  not  for  Venice!  The 
burglars  kept,  therefore,  in  their  pay  two  Christians, 
who  were  as  ready  to  forswear  themselves  as  any  Tam- 


BELIEF  AS  A  BASIS  OP  MORAL  OBLIGATION.  77 

many  Hall  politician  at  the  polls,  and  who  made  the 
requisite  false  oaths  at  fixed  rates. 

These  examples  serve  to  show  the  natural  tendency 
of  mankind  to  look  upon  compatriots  and  coreligion- 
ists from  a  different  moral  standpoint  from  that  with 
which  they  regard  persons  who  are  not  connected 
with  them  by  such  ties,  and  to  whom  they  not  only  at- 
tribute a  lower  standard  of  right  and  wrong,  but  also 
act  upon  it  as  a  rule  of  conduct  in  dealing  with 
them. 

Great  dissimilarity  in  physical  characteristics  inten- 
sifies the  ethical  estrangement  caused  by  differences  of 
blood  and  of  belief.  The  more  any  tribes  of  men  devi- 
ate from  ourselves  in  form  and  feature,  the  less  we 
are  inclined  to  think  of  them  as  endowed  with  the  same 
powers  and  passions,  the  same  kind  of  sympathy  and 
sensibility  as  ourselves,  or  as  entitled  to  the  same  rights 
that  we  possess.  A  people  with  black  skin,  woolly  hair, 
flat  noses,  and  countenances  of  a  strongly  prognathous 
character  do  not  enlist  our  kindly  feelings  and  awaken 
our  affections  in  the  same  manner  and  degree  as  repre- 
sentatives of  a  fair-complexioned  and  fintly  featured 
type  would  do.  The  schemes  of  European  governments 
and  of  private  individuals  and  corporations  for  the  ex- 
ploration, partition,  and  colonization  of  Africa  are 
based  upon  the  assumption  that  the  Africans  themselves 
have  no  claim  to  the  continent  which  they  inhabit. 
The  only  African  colony  that  has  ever  been  founded  on 
principles  of  common  justice  and  with  a  full  recognition 
of  the  rights  of  the  natives  is  the  Eepublic  of  Liberia, 
established  more  than  sixty  years  ago  under  the  aus- 
pices of  the  United  States,  and  this  was  done  solely 
for  the  sake  of  getting  rid  of  an  undesirable  popula- 


78  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

tion  of  free  negroes  at  home.  All  the  other  enter- 
prises of  tliis  sort  are  morally  and  legally  no  better  than 
buccaneering  expeditions. 

The  ethical  maxims  which  we  are  wont  to  accept  as 
axiomatic  in  our  mutual  relations  as  civilized  individ- 
uals and  nations  are  too  easily  set  aside  as  inconvenient 
and  inapplicable  to  our  dealings  with  the  so-called 
lower  races.  The  fatal  facility  with  which  under  such 
circumstances  enlightened  Europeans  of  the  nineteenth 
century  may  revert  to  primitive  savagery  as  soon  as 
the  outward  restraints  of  civilization  are  removed  is 
seen  in  the  early  settlers  of  Australia,  who  did  not 
scruple  to  shoot  the  defenceless  and  harmless  aborigines 
as  they  would  any  game,  and  feed  the  carcasses  to  their 
hounds.  The  inoffensive  and  rather  feeble-bodied 
Negritos  were  treated  as  beasts  of  venery,  which  could 
be  hunted  without  danger  and  furnished  plentiful  sup- 
plies of  dog's  meat,  costing  the  sportsman  nothing,  not 
even  a  pang  of  conscience,  only  the  price  of  a  cartridge. 
(Cf.  Schaafhausen,  in  The  Anthropological  Review, 
London,  1869,  p.  368.) 

More  recent  and  even  more  revolting  exemplifica- 
tions of  this  tendency  to  relapse  into  barbarism  are  the 
atrocities  committed  by  Major  Barttelot,  and  the  con- 
duct of  Mr.  Jameson,  of  Stanley's  Emin-Relief  Expedi- 
tion, who  purchased  a  young  negro  girl  and  gave  her  to 
a  horde  of  cannibals  in  order  to  make  sketches  from  life 
of  the  manner  in  which  she  was  torn  in  pieces  and 
devoured. 

The  atrocities  still  committed  by  the  officials  of  the 
Belgian  Government  in  Congo  are  a  disgrace  to  a 
civilized  people.  Scores  of  natives  have  their  hands  cut 
off  or  are  otherwise  mutilated  simply  because  they  are 


BELIEF  AS  A  BASIS  OF  MORAL  OBLIGATION.    79 

unable  to  supply  ivory  and  rubber  enough  to  satisfy  the 
insatiate  greed  of  traffickers  in  those  articles.  Soldiers 
in  the  service  of  the  State  are  permitted  to  eat  the  bod- 
ies of  those  who  have  fallen  in  battle,  since  human  flesh, 
thus  obtained,  furnishes  the  cheapest  rations  for  the 
army.  As  the  result  of  this  policy  races,  who  were  not 
cannibals  when  they  first  came  in  contact  with  white 
men,  have  gradually  become  so  through  intercourse  with 
cannibal  troops  under  the  command  of  Belgian  officers. 
Thus  the  increase  of  cannibalism  on  the  Congo  is  due 
to  the  domination  of  a  European  sovereign  acting  as  the 
representative  of  the  European  powers. 

There  are  also  instances  on  record  of  Englishmen, 
Dutchmen,  and  Frenchmen  who  in  their  warfare  with 
Indians  adopted  from  their  savage  foes  the  custom  of 
scalping  and  torturing  their  captives.  In  fact,  as  Waitz 
has  shown  in  his  Anthropology  (iii,  174),  there  is  scarce- 
ly a  vice  of  barbarous  tribes  which  Europeans  when 
removed  from  the  restraints  of  civilization  have  not 
practised.  In  the  South  Sea  islands  they  have  in  some 
cases  become  anthropophagous. 

Here  we  are  suddenly  brought  face  to  ft^ce  with  the 
depressing  fact  that  men,  who  are  heirs  to  ages  of  in- 
tellectual culture  and  armed  with  all  the  powers 
and  possibilities  of  good  and  evil  which  modern 
science  has  put  into  their  hands,  yet  relapse  morally  to 
the  level  of  rude  cave  dvv^eliers  and  contemporaries 
of  the  mammoth  in  maldng  their  superiority  of  men- 
tal endowment  and  material  equipment  minister  to 
deeds  and  passions  worthy  of  the  lowest  stage  of  bar- 
barism. 

All  emigration  to  wild  regions  is,  in  a  greater  or  less 
degree,  atavistic  in  its  effects,  and,  by  loosening  or  re- 


80  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

moving  the  many  leading  strings  of  association  by 
which  the  average  man  is  kept  in  an  upright  position 
and  a  straightforward  course,  lets  him  fall  back  and 
retrograde,  and  thus  tends  to  bring  him  nearer  to  his 
flint-chipping  neolithic  ancestor.  It  throws  each  in- 
dividual upon  his  own  ethical  resources  by  releasing 
him  from  the  constant  though  hardly  conscious  so- 
cial pressure  of  an  environment  which  is  the  result- 
ant of  long  periods  of  human  progress,  and  by  which 
alone  the  masses  of  so-called  civilized  nations  are  pre- 
vented from  relapsing  into  the  original  condition  of  the 
race. 

Happily,  however,  such  extreme  cases  of  moral  re- 
version as  those  of  the  early  emigrants  to  Australia 
and  the  recent  explorers  of  Africa  are  only  sporadic, 
and  the  ubiquity  of  humane  and  enlightened  public 
opinion  arising  from  greater  frequency  and  rapidity 
of  international  intercourse,  and  causing  its  immedi- 
ate influence  to  be  felt  in  the  remotest  and  roughest 
border  lands  of  savage  and  civilized  life,  will  render 
them  still  rarer  in  the  future.  The  telegraph  and  the 
telephone  are  making  it  daily  more  difiicult  and  will 
eventually  make  it  impossible  for  the  most  pushing 
pioneer  wholly  to  lose  communication  with  the  advanc- 
ing body  of  organized  forces  behind  him,  or  to  break 
away  from  the  control  of  that  community  of  impulses 
and  purposes,  and  that  consensus  of  moral  ideas  and 
perceptions,  which  we  call  public  conscience.  This 
influence  is  beginning  to  penetrate  even  the  darkest 
regions  of  Central  Africa  and  to  protect  the  unknown 
barbaric  tribes  against  the  ravages  of  Arab  slave  traders 
and  the  arbitrary  authority  of  European  adventurers. 
Each  nation  that  joins  in  this  combined  movement  is 


BELIEF  AS  A  BASIS  OF  MORAL  OBLIGATION.   81 

doubtless  seeking,  first  of  all,  to  further  its  own  com- 
mercial and  colonial  interests;  but  it  suffices  as  an  illus- 
tration of  the  prevailing  spirit  of  the  age  that  the  basis 
on  which  they  profess  to  unite  is  the  broad  principle 
of  a  common  humanity. 


CHAPTER  III. 

ETHICAL   EELATIONS   OF   MAN   TO   BEAST. 

Anthropocentric  psychology  and  ethics.  Teleological  inferences 
from  this  postulate.  Illustrations  from  Bernardin  de  Saint- 
Pierre  and  Gennadius.  Its  influence  in  checking  the  growth 
of  science  and  the  progress  of  hygiene.  Natural  phenomena 
regarded  as  portents.  Astrology  and  horoscopy.  Comets  as 
warnings  to  mankind.  Increase  Mather's  view.  Bayle's  ridi- 
cule of  this  theory.  Notion  that  fruits  and  flowers  exist  only 
for  man.  The  wasteful  prodigality  of  Nature.  Gray's  senti- 
ment on  the  subject.  The  real  function  of  the  colour  and  odour 
of  plants.  Schopenhauer  on  the  anthropocentric  principle  in 
Judaism  and  Christianity.  The  Hebrew  cosmogony.  Man's 
dominion  and  its  practical  effects  according  to  Shelley  and 
Burns.  Observation  of  Mrs.  Jameson.  Celsus's  stricture  in- 
dorsed by  Dr.  Thomas  Arnold.  Paley's  defective  definition 
of  virtue.  Bishop  Butler  on  the  immortality  of  animals. 
Opinion  of  Barclay.  Philozoic  philosophy  of  Henry  Hallam. 
Denial  of  animals'  rights  by  Catholic  theologians  and  by 
Protestant  writers  on  ethics.  Influence  of  such  theories  upon 
modern  legislation.  Exposure  by  Samuel  Plimsoll  and  Henry 
Bergh  of  the  horrors  of  cattle  transportation.  "  Horses  cheap- 
er than  oats."  American  extravagance  and  recklessness. 
Erasmus  Darwin's  doctrine  of  the  greatest  possible  happiness 
set  aside  by  the  science  of  evolution. 

Ethnocentric  geography,  which  caused  each  petty 
tribe  to  regard  itself  as  the  centre  of  the  earth,  and 
geocentric  astronomy,  which  caused  mankind  to  regard 
the  earth  as  the  centre  of  the  universe,  are  conceptions 


ETHICAL  RELATIONS  OF  MAN  TO  BEAST.       83 

that  have  been  gradually  outgrown  and  generally  dis- 
carded— not,  however,  without  leaving  distinct  and  in- 
delible traces  of  themselves  in  human  speech  and  con- 
duct. But  this  is  not  the  case  with  anthropocentric 
psychology  and  ethics,  which  treat  man  as  a  being 
essentially  different  and  inseparably  set  apart  from  all 
other  sentient  creatures,  to  which  he  is  bound  by  no 
ties  of  mental  affinity  or  moral  obligation.  Neverthe- 
less, all  these  notions  spring  from  the  same  root,  having 
their  origin  in  man's  false  and  overweening  conceit 
of  himself  as  the  member  of  a  tribe,  the  inhabitant  of  a 
planet,  or  the  lord  of  creation. 

It  was  upon  this  sort  of  anthropocentric  assumption 
that  teleologists  used  to  build  their  arguments  in  proof 
of  the  existence  and  goodness  of  God  as  shown  by  the 
evidences  of  beneficent  design  in  the  world.  All  their 
reasonings  in  support  of  this  doctrine  were  based  upon 
the  theory  that  the  final  purpose  of  every  created  thing 
is  the  promotion  of  human  happiness.  Take  away  this 
anthropocentric  postulate,  and  the  whole  logical  struc- 
ture tumbles  into  a  heap  of  unfounded  and  irrelevant 
assertions  leading  to  lame  and  impotent  conclusions. 

Thus  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre  states  that  garlic, 
being  a  specific  for  maladies  caused  by  marshy  exhala- 
tions, grows  in  swampy  places,  in  order  that  the  anti- 
dote may  be  easily  accessible  to  man  when  he  becomes 
infected  with  malarious  disease.  Also  the  fruits  of 
spring  and  summer,  he  adds,  are  peculiarly  juicy,  be- 
cause man  needs  them  for  his  refreshment  in  hot 
weather;  on  the  other  hand,  autumn  fruits,  like  nuts, 
are  oily,  because  oil  generates  heat  and  keeps  men 
warm  in  winter.  It  is  for  man's  sake,  too,  that  in  lands 
where  it  seldom  or  never  rains  there  is  always  a  heavy 


84  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

deposition  of  dew.  If  we  can  show  that  any  product  or 
phenomenon  of  Nature  is  useful  to  us,  we  think  we  have 
discovered  its  sufficient  raison  d^etre,  and  extol  the  wis- 
dom and  kindness  of  the  Creator;  but  if  anything  is 
harmful  to  us  we  can  not  imagine  why  it  should  exist. 
How  much  intellectual  acuteness  and  learning  have  been 
expended  to  reconcile  the  fact  that  the  moon  is  visible 
only  a  very  small  part  of  the  time,  with  the  theory  that 
it  was  intended  to  illuminate  the  earth  in  the  absence 
of  the  sun,  for  the  benefit  of  its  inhabitants! 

Gennadius,  a  Greek  presbyter,  who  flourished  at 
Constantinople  about  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century, 
remarks  in  his  commentary  on  the  first  chapter  of  Gene- 
sis, that  God  created  the  beasts  of  the  earth  and  the 
cattle  after  their  kind  on  the  same  day  on  which  he 
created  man,  in  order  that  these  creatures  might  be 
there  ready  to  serve  him. 

But  it  would  be  superfluous  to  multiply  examples 
of  the  influence  of  this  anthropocentric  idea  as  it  has 
worked  itself  out  in  the  history  of  mankind.  Every 
science  has  had  to  encounter  its  opposition,  and  it  has 
been  a  stumbling-block  in  the  way  of  every  effort  to 
enlarge  human  knowledge  and  to  promote  human  hap- 
piness. It  has  tended  to  check  the  progress  of  hygienic 
research  and  sanitary  reform;  for  if  man  is  of  such 
exceptional  importance  that  his  conduct  or  misconduct 
can  bring  down  epidemics  upon  whole  communities  and 
vast  continents  as  visitations  of  divine  wrath,  whoever 
seeks  to  ward  off  or  to  stay  these  punishments  is  guilty 
of  a  sacrilegious  attempt  to  parry  the  blow  aimed  at  the 
wicked  by  the  arm  of  the  Almighty,  and,  by  thus  set- 
ting himself  in  antagonism  to  God,  becomes  in  fact 
an  ally  and  adversary  of  the  devil.     Thus  vaccination 


ETHICAL  RELATIONS  OF  MAN  TO  BEAST.       85 

was  denounced,  not  on  the  ground  taken  by  its  present 
opponents,  that  it  is  useless  as  a  preventive  of  small- 
pox and  a  prolific  source  of  other  diseases,  but  on 
account  of  its  real  or  supposed  prophylactic  effective- 
ness, since  it  impiously  wrenched  from  the  hand  of  the 
Deity  one  of  his  most  fatal  weapons  of  retribution. 

To  what  absurdities  of  presumption  the  anthropo- 
centric  conception  has  paved  the  way  is  evident  from 
the  belief,  once  universally  entertained,  that  the  sun, 
moon,  and  stars  were  placed  in  the  firmament  with  ex- 
press reference  to  man,  and  exerted  a  benign  or  bale- 
ful influence  upon  his  destiny  from  the  cradle  to  the 
grave.    Owen  Glendower's  bombastic  boast — 

...  At  my  nativity 
The  front  of  heaven  was  full  of  fiery  shapes, 
Of  burning  cressets ;  and  at  my  birth 
The  frame  and  huge  foundation  of  the  earth 
Shaked  like  a  coward — 

was  well  answered  by  Hotspur:  "  Why,  so  it  would  have 
done  at  the  same  season  if  your  mother's  cat  had  but 
kittened,  though  yourself  had  ne'er  beer  born."  And 
yet  this  fulsome  brag  of  the  Welsh  swashbuckler  was 
only  an  extravagant  statement  of  what  the  captious 
Henry  Percy  and  his  contemporaries  all  held  to  be 
virtually  true.  Poe  embodies  the  same  sentiment  in 
his  youthful  poem,  Al  Aaraaf,  and  would  fain  preserve 
this  brighter  world  of  his  fancy  from  the  contagion 
of  human  evil — 

Lest  the  stars  totter  in  the  guilt  of  man. 

Astrology  and  horoscopy,  from  which  even  the  keen 
intellects  of  Kepler  and  Tycho  de  Brahe  could  not  dis- 
entangle themselves,  and  to  which  the  still  more  modern 


86  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

genius  of  Goethe  paid  a  characteristic  tribute  in  the 
story  of  his  nativity,  were  only  this  anthropocentric 
conceit  masquerading  as  science,  and  leaving  vestiges 
of  itself  in  such  common  words  as  "ill-starred'^  and 
"  lunatic." 

Comets  were  universally  regarded  as  portents  of  dis- 
asters, sent  expressly  as  warnings  for  the  reproof  and 
reformation  of  mankind;  tempests  and  lightnings  were 
feared  as  harbingers  of  divine  wrath  and  instruments 
of  punishment  for  human  transgression.  According 
to  the  Eev.  Increase  Mather,  God  took  the  trouble  to 
eclipse  the  sun  in  August,  1672,  merely  to  prognosticate 
the  death  of  the  President  of  Harvard  College  and  of 
two  colonial  governors,  all  of  whom  "  died  within  a 
twelvemonth  after."  This  is  but  a  single  example  of 
the  wide  prevalence  and  general  acceptance  of  a  popular 
superstition  constantly  tested  and  easily  proved  by 
the  logical  fallacy  post  hoc  ergo  propter  hoc.  Bayle, 
in  his  Divers  Thoughts  on  Comets  (Pensees  Diverses 
sur  les  Cometes),  ridicules  the  foolish  pride  and  vanity 
of  man,  who  imagines  that  "  he  can  not  die  without 
disturbing  the  whole  course  of  Nature  and  compelling 
the  heavens  to  put  themselves  to  fresh  expense  in  order 
to  light  his  funeral  pomp." 

Not  only  were  the  fruits  of  the  earth  made  to  grow 
for  human  sustenance,  but  the  flowers  of  the  field  were 
supposed  to  bud  and  blossom,  putting  on  their  gayest 
attire  and  emitting  their  sweetest  perfume,  solely  as  a 
contribution  to  human  happiness;  and  it  was  deemed 
one  of  the  mysteries  and  mistakes  of  Nature,  never  too 
much  to  be  puzzled  over  and  wondered  at,  that  these 
things  should  spring  up  and  expend  their  beauty  and 
fragrance  in  remote  places  untrodden  by  the  foot  of 


ETHICAL  RELATIONS  OF  MAN  TO  BEAST.       87 

man.     Gray  expresses  this  feeling  in  the  oft-quoted 
lines: 

Full  many  a  flower  is  born  to  blush  unseen, 
And  waste  its  sweetness  on  the  desert  air. 

Science  has  finally  and  effectually  taken  this  con- 
ceit out  of  man  by  showing  that  the  flower  blooms  not 
for  the  purpose  of  giving  him  agreeable  sensations,  but 
for  its  own  sake,  and  that  it  presumed  to  put  forth 
sweet  and  beautiful  blossoms  long  before  he  appeared 
on  the  earth  as  a  rude  cave-haunting  and  flint-chipping 
savage. 

The  colour  and  odour  of  the  plant  are  designed 
not  so  much  to  please  man  as  to  attract  insects,  which 
promote  the  process  of  fertilization  and  thus  insure 
the  preservation  of  the  species.  The  gratification  of 
man's  aesthetic  sense  and  taste  for  the  beautiful  does 
not  enter  into  Nature's  intentions;  and  although  the 
flower  may  bloom  unseen  by  any  human  eye,  it  does 
not  on  that  account  waste  its  sweetness,  but  fully  ac- 
complishes its  mission,  provided  there  is  a  bee  or  a 
bug  abroad  to  be  drawn  to  it.  That  the  fragrance 
and  variegated  petals  are  alluring  to  a  vagrant  insect 
is  a  condition  of  far  more  importance  in  determining 
the  fate  of  the  plant  than  that  they  should  be  charming 
to  man. 

Plants,  on  the  other  hand,  which  depend  upon  the 
force  of  the  wind  for  fructification,  are  not  distin- 
guished for  beauty  of  colour  or  sweetness  of  odour, 
since  these  qualities,  however  agreeable  to  man,  would 
be  wasted  on  the  wind.  This  is  an  illustration  of  the 
prudent  economy  of  Nature,  who  never  indulges  in  su- 
perfluities or  overburdens  her  products  with  useless 
attributes;  but  the  test  of  utility  which  "great  creat- 


88  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

ing  Nature  "  sets  up  in  such  cases  is  little  flattering  to 
man,  and  has  no  reference  to  his  tastes  and  suscepti- 
bilities, but  is  determined  solely  by  the  serviceableness 
of  certain  qualities  to  the  plant  itself  in  the  struggle 
for  existence. 

According  to  Schopenhauer,  anthropocentric  ego- 
ism is  a  fundamental  and  fatal  defect  in  the  psycho- 
logical and  etliical  teachings  of  both  Judaism  and 
Christianity,  and  has  been  the  source  of  untold  misery 
to  myriads  of  sentient  and  highly  sensitive  organisms. 
"  These  religions,^'  he  says,  "  have  unnaturally  severed 
man  from  the  animal  world,  to  which  he  essentially 
belongs,  and  placed  him  on  a  pinnacle  apart,  treating 
all  lower  creatures  as  mere  things;  whereas  Brahman- 
ism  and  Buddhism  insist  not  only  upon  his  kinship 
with  all  forms  of  animal  life,  but  also  upon  his  vital 
connection  with  all  animated  Nature,  binding  him  up 
into  intimate  relationship  with  them  by  metempsycho- 
sis.^^ 

In  the  Hebrew  cosmogony  there  is  no  continuity 
in  the  process  of  creation,  whereby  the  genesis  of  man 
is  in  any  wise  connected  with  the  genesis  of  the  lower 
animals.  After  the  Lord  God,  by  his  fiat,  had  produced 
beasts,  birds,  fishes,  and  creeping  things,  he  ignored  all 
this  mass  of  protoplastic  and  organic .  material,  and 
took  an  entirely  new  departure  in  the  production  of 
man,  whom  he  formed  out  of  the  dust  of  the  ground. 
Science  shows  him  to  have  been  originally  a  little  higher 
than  the  ape,  out  of  which  he  was  gradually  and  pain- 
fully evolved;  Scripture  takes  him  out  of  his  environ- 
ment, severs  him  from  his  antecedents,  and  makes  him 
a  little  lower  than  the  angels.  Upon  the  being  thus 
arbitrarily  created  absolute  dominion  is  conferred  over 


ETHICAL  RELATIONS  OP  MAN  TO  BEAST.       89 

every  beast  of  the  earth  and  every  fowl  of  the  air, 
which  are  to  be  to  him  "for  meat/^  They  are  given 
over  to  his  supreme  and  irresponsible  control,  without 
the  slightest  injunction  of  kindness  or  the  faintest 
suggestion  of  any  duties  or  obligations  toward  them. 

Again,  when  the  earth  is  to  be  renewed  and  re- 
plenished after  the  deluge,  the  same  principles  are 
reiterated  and  the  same  line  of  demarcation  is  drawn 
and  even  deepened.  God  blesses  Noah  and  his  sons, 
bids  them  "be  fruitful  and  multiply,"  and  then  adds, 
as  regards  the  lower  animals:  "  The  fear  of  you  and 
the  dread  of  you  shall  be  upon  every  beast  of  the  earth 
and  upon  every  fowl  of  the  air,  upon  all  that  moveth 
upon  the  earth,  and  upon  all  the  fishes  of  the  sea;  into 
your  hand  are  they  delivered.  Every  moving  thing 
that  liveth  shall  be  meat  for  you;  even  as  the  green 
herb  have  I  given  you  all  things." 

This  tyrannical  mandate  is  not  mitigated  by  any 
intimation  of  the  merciful  manner  in  which  the  human 
autocrat  should  treat  the  creatures  thus  subjected  to 
his  capricious  will.  On  the  contrary,  the  only  thing 
that  he  is  positively  commanded  to  do  wilh  reference 
to  them  is  to  eat  them.  They  are  to  be  regarded  by  him 
simply  as  food,  having  no  more  rights  and  deserving 
no  more  consideration  as  means  of  sating  his  appetite 
than  a  grain  of  corn  or  a  blade  of  grass. 

The  practical  working  of  this  decree  has  been 
summed  up  by  Shelley,  with  his  wonted  force  and  suc- 
cinctness, when  he  says,  "  The  supremacy  of  man  is, 
like  Satan's,  a  supremacy  of  pain."  Burns  regrets  the 
fatal  effect  of  the  sovereignty  thus  conferred  upon 
the  human  race  in  destroying  the  mutual  sympathy 
and  confidence  which  should  exist  between  the  lord 


90  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

of  creation  and  the  lower  animals  in  the  lines  addressed 
To  a  Mouse,  on  turning  her  up  in  her  Nest  with  the 
Plough,  November,  1785: 

I'm  truly  sorry  man's  dominion 
Has  broken  Nature's  social  union, 
An'  justifies  that  ill  opinion 

Which  makes  thee  startle 
At  me,  thy  poor  earth-born  companion, 

An'  fellow-mortal. 

In  the  subsequent  annals  of  the  world  we  have  ample 
commentaries  on  this  primitive  code  written  in  the 
blood  of  helpless,  innocent,  and  confiding  creatures, 
which,  although  called  dumb  and  incapable  of  record- 
ing their  sufferings,  yet 

.  .  .  have  long  tradition  and  swift  speech, 
Can  tell  with  touches  and  sharp-darting  cries 
Whole  histories  of  timid  races  taught 
To  breathe  in  terror  by  red-handed  man. 

Indeed,  ever  since  AbePs  firstlings  of  the  flock  were 
more  acceptable  than  Cain's  bloodless  offerings  of  the 
fruits  of  the  fields,  priests  have  performed  the  func- 
tions of  butchers,  converting  sacred  shrines  into 
shambles  in  their  endeavours  to  pander  to  the  gross  ap- 
petites of  cruel  and  carnivorous  gods.  Cain's  offering 
was  rejected,  says  Dr.  Kitto,  because  "he  declined  to 
enter  into  the  sacrificial  institution."  In  other  words, 
he  would  not  shed  the  blood  of  beasts  to  gratify  the 
Lord — a  refusal  which  we  can  not  but  regard  as  ex- 
ceedingly commendable  in  Adam's  first-born. 

"  I  do  not  remember,"  observed  Mrs.  Jameson,  "  ever 
to  have  heard  the  kind  and  just  treatment  of  animals 
enforced  on  Christian  principles  or  made  the  subject 
of  a  sermon."     George  Herbert  was  a  man  of  gentle 


ETHICAL  RELATIONS  OP  MAN  TO  BEAST.       91 

spirit  and  ready  hand  for  the  relief  of  all  forms  of 
human  distress,  and  in  his  book  entitled  A  Priest  to 
the  Temple,  or  the  Country  Parson,  lays  down  rules 
and  precepts  for  the  guidance  of  the  clergyman  in  all 
relations  of  life,  even  to  the  minutest  circumstances 
and  remotest  contingencies  incident  to  parochial  care. 
But  this  tender-hearted  man  does  not  deem  it  necessary 
for  the  parson  to  take  the  slightest  interest  in  animals, 
and  does  not  utter  a  word  of  counsel  as  to  the  manner 
in  which  his  parishioners  should  be  taught  their  duties 
toward  the  creatures  so  wholly  dependent  upon  them. 
Indeed,  no  treatise  on  pastoral  theology  ever  touches 
this  topic,  nor  is  it  ever  made  the  theme  of  a  discourse 
from  the  pulpit,  or  of  systematic  instruction  in  the 
Sunday  school. 

Neither  the  synagogue  nor  the  church,  neither 
sandedrin  nor  ecclesiastical  council,  has  ever  regarded 
this  subject  as  falling  within  its  scope,  and  sought 
to  inculcate  as  a  dogma  or  to  enforce  by  decree 
a  proper  consideration  for  the  rights  of  the  lower 
animals.  One  of  the  chief  objections  urged  by  Celsus 
more  than  seventeen  centuries  ago  ag;dnst  Chris- 
tianity was  that  it  ^^  considers  everything  as  having 
been  created  solely  for  man."  This  stricture  is  in- 
dorsed by  Dr.  Thomas  Arnold,  of  Eugby,  who  also 
animadverts  on  the  evils  growing  out  of  the  anthropo- 
centric  character  of  Christianity  as  a  scheme  of  redemp- 
tion and  a  system  of  theodicy.  "It  would  seem,'*  he 
says,  "  as  if  the  primitive  Christian,  by  laying  so  much 
stress  upon  a  future  life  in  contradistinction  to  this  life, 
and  placing  the  lower  creatures  out  of  the  pale  of  hope, 
placed  them  at  the  same  time  out  of  the  pale  of  sym- 
pathy, and  thus  laid  the  foundation  for  this  utter  dis- 
7 


92  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

regard  of  animals  in  the  light  of  our  fellow-creatures. 
The  definition  of  virtue  among  the  early  Christians 
was  the  same  as  Paley's — that  it  was  good  performed 
for  the  sake  of  insuring  eternal  happiness — which 
of  course  excluded  all  the  so-called  brute  creatures. 
Kind,  loving,  submissive,  conscientious,  much-enduring, 
we  know  them  to  be;  but  because  we  deprive  them  of 
all  stake  in  the  future,  because  they  have  no  selfish, 
calculated  aim,  these  are  not  virtues;  yet  if  we  say  ^  a 
vicious  horse,'  why  not  say  *  a  virtuous  horse '  ?  " 

We  are  ready  enough,  adds  Dr.  Arnold,  to  endow 
animals  with  our  bad  moral  qualities,  but  grudge  them 
the  possession  of  our  good  ones.  The  Germans,  whose 
natural  and  hereditary  sympathy  with  the  brute  cre- 
ation is  stronger  than  that  of  any  other  Western  people, 
speak  of  horses  as  "  fromm"  pious,  not  in  the  religious, 
but  in  the  primary  and  proper  sense  of  the  word,  mean- 
ing thereby  kind  and  docile.  The  English  *'  gentle '' 
and  the  French  ^'  gentil"  which  are  used  in  the  same 
connection,  refer  to  good  conduct  as  the  result  of  fine 
breeding. 

Archdeacon  Paley's  definition  of  virtue,  to  which  Dr. 
Arnold  adverts,  is  essentially  anthropocentric  and  in- 
tensely egoistic.  "Virtue,"  he  says,  "is  the  doing 
good  to  mankind  in  obedience  to  the  will  of  God,  for 
the  sake  of  everlasting  happiness."  In  order  to  be 
virtuous,  according  to  this  extremely  narrow  and  wholly 
inadequate  conception  of  virtue,  we  must,  in  the  first 
place,  do  good  to  mankind,  our  conduct  toward  the  brute 
creation  not  being  taken  into  the  account;  secondly, 
our  action  must  be  in  obedience  to  the  will  of  God,  thus 
ruling  out  all  generous  impulses  originating  in  the 
spontaneous  desire  to  do  good;  thirdly,  we  must  have 


ETHICAL  RELATIONS  OF  MAIST  TO  BEAST.       93 

an  eye  single  to  our  own  supreme  personal  advantage — 
in  other  words,  our  conduct  must  be  utterly  selfish, 
spring  not  merely  from  momentary  pleasure  or  tem- 
porary profit,  but  from  far-seeing  calculations  of  the 
effect  it  may  have  in  securing  our  eternal  happiness. 
Thus  the  virtuous  man  becomes  the  incarnation  of  the 
intensest  self-love  and  self-seeking,  and  virtue  the 
synonym  of  excessive  venality.  From  a  moral  point  of 
view,  there  is  no  greater  merit  in  "  otherworldliness  " 
than  in  worldliness,  and  no  reason  why  the  endeavour  to 
attain  personal  happiness  in  a  future  life  should  differ  in 
quality  from  the  effort  to  make  everything  minister 
to  our  personal  happiness  in  the  present  life. 

"  The  whole  subject  of  the  brute  creation,"  says  Dr. 
Arnold,  "  is  to  me  one  of  such  painful  mystery  that  I 
dare  not  approach  it."  The  mental  distress  experienced 
in  such  cases  arises  from  the  fact  that  the  subject  is  ap- 
proached from  the  wrong  side  and  surveyed  from  a 
false  point  of  view.  Traditional  theology  and  an- 
thropocentric  ethics  are  brought  into  conflict  with  the 
better  impulses  of  a  broad  and  generous  ntture  and  the 
sharp  antagonism  could  hardly  fail  to  be  a  source  of 
perplexity  and  pain.  "  Charity,"  says  Lord  Bacon, 
"  will  hardly  water  the  ground,  where  it  must  first 
fill  a  pool "  ;  and  of  all  pools  the  hardest  to  fill  is  that 
which  is  dug  in  the  dry,  gravelly  soil  of  human  egot- 
ism. 

Theocritus,  the  father  of  Greek  idyllic  poetry,  rep- 
resents Hercules  as  exclaiming,  after  he  had  slain  the 
ISTemean  lion,  "  Hades  received  a  monster  soul "  ;  and 
he  saw  nothing  incongruous  in  the  spirit  of  the  dead 
beast  joining  the  company  of  the  departed  spirits  of 
men  in  the  lower  world.    Sydney  Smith  says,  in  speak- 


94  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

ing  of  the  soul  of  the  brute,  "  To  this  soul  some  have 
impiously  allowed  immortality."  Why  such  a  belief 
should  be  deemed  impious  it  is  difficult  to  discover. 
The  question  which  the  psychologist  has  to  consider 
is  not  whether  the  doctrine  is  impious,  but  whether 
it  is  true.  No  scientific  opinion  has  ever  been  ad- 
vanced that  has  not  seemed  impious  to  some  minds, 
and  been  denounced  and  persecuted  as  such  by  ecclesi- 
astical authorities. 

Bishop  Butler,  on  the  contrary,  in  his  work  on  The 
Analogy  of  Religion,  Natural  and  Revealed,  to  the 
Constitution  and  Course  of  Nature,  declares  that  "we 
can  not  find  anything  throughout  the  whole  analogy 
of  Nature  to  afford  us  even  the  slightest  presumption 
that  animals  ever  lose  their  living  powers."  He  ad- 
mits that  his  argument  in  support  of  the  doctrine  of 
a  future  life  proves  the  immortality  of  brutes  as  well  as 
that  of  man,  and  thus  recognises  their  spiritual  kin- 
ship. 

An  eminent  Scotch  physician  and  anatomist.  Dr. 
John  Barclay,  in  his  Inquiry  into  the  Opinions,  An- 
cient and  Modern,  concerning  Life  and  Organization 
(1825),  urges  the  probable  immortality  of  the  lower 
animals,  which,  he  thinks,  are  "reserved,  as  forming 
many  of  the  accustomed  links  in  the  chain  of  being, 
and  by  preserving  the  chain  entire,  contribute  in  the 
future  state,  as  they  do  here,  to  the  general  beauty 
and  variety  of  the  universe,  a  source  not  only  of  sublime 
but  of  perpetual  delight."  The  author  seems  to  infer 
the  continued  existence  of  the  brute  creation  from  the 
fact  that  it  forms  an  essential  part  of  universal  being, 
and  that  its  total  disappearance  would  mar  the  per- 
fection of  the  next  world,  which  should  be  more  per- 


ETHICAL  RELATIONS  OF  MAN  TO  BEAST.       95 

feet  than  this  world.  He  assumes,  however,  that  the 
lower  animals  are  endowed  with  immortality,  not  so 
much  from  psychological  necessity  or  for  their  own 
sake  as  sentient  and  intelligent  creatures,  as  for  man's 
sake,  in  order  that  their  presence  may  minister  to  his 
pleasure  by  forming  an  attractive  feature  in  the  heaven- 
ly landscape.  It  is,  therefore,  solely  from  anthropo- 
centric  considerations  that  they  are  granted  this  lease 
of  eternal  life;  just  as  "the  poor  Indian"  is  repre- 
sented by  the  poet  as  looking  forward  to  the  possession 
of  happy  hunting  fields  after  death,  where  he  may  fol- 
low with  keener  enjoyment  his  favourite  pursuit,  and 
"his  faithful  dog  shall  bear  him  company." 

More  than  fifty  years  ago  Henry  Hallam  made  the 
following  observations,  which  are  remarkable  as  an  an- 
ticipation of  the  ethical  corollary  to  the  doctrine  of 
evolution:  "  Few  at  present,  who  believe  in  the  im- 
mortality of  the  human  soul,  would  deny  the  same  to 
the  elephant;  but  it  must  be  owned  that  the  discov- 
eries of  zoology  have  pushed  this  to  consequences  which 
some  might  not  readily  adopt.  The  spiritual  being  of 
a  sponge  revolts  a  little  our  prejudices;  yet  there  is 
no  resting  place,  and  we  must  admit  this  or  be  content 
to  sink  ourselves  into  a  mass  of  medullary  fibre.  Brutes 
have  been  as  slowly  emancipated  in  philosophy  as  some 
classes  of  mankind  have  been  in  civil  polity;  their  souls, 
we  see,  were  almost  universally  disputed  to  them  at 
the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  even  by  those  who 
did  not  absolutely  bring  them  down  to  machinery. 
Even  within  the  recollection  of  many,  it  was  common 
to  deny  them  any  kind  of  reasoning  faculty,  and  to  solve 
their  most  sagacious  actions  by  the  vague  word  in- 
stinct.   We  have  come  in  late  years  to  think  better  of 


96  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

our  humble  companions;  and,  as  usual  in  similar  cases, 
the  preponderant  bias  seems  rather  too  much  of  a  level- 
ling character."  During  the  half  century  that  has 
elapsed  since  these  words  were  written,  not  only  has 
zoology  made  still  greater  progress  in  the  direction 
indicated,  but  a  new  science  of  zoopsychology  has  sprung 
up,  in  which  the  mental  traits  and  moral  qualities  of 
the  lower  animals  have  been,  not  merely  recorded  as 
curious  and  comical  anecdotes,  but  systematically  in- 
vestigated and  philosophically  explained.  In  conse- 
quence of  this  radical  change  of  view,  human  society 
in  general  has  become  more  philozoic,  not  upon  re- 
ligious or  sentimental  but  upon  strictly  scientific 
grounds,  and  developed  a  sympathy  and  solidarity  with 
the  animal  world,  having  its  sources  less  in  the  tender 
and  transitory  emotions  of  the  heart  than  in  the  pro- 
found and  permanent  convictions  of  the  mind. 

In  an  essay  published  a  few  years  ago  in  The  Dub- 
lin Eeview  (October,  1887,  p.  418),  the  Eight  Eev. 
John  Cuthbert  Hedley,  Bishop  of  Newport  and  Menevia, 
asserts  that  animals  have  no  rights,  because  they  are  not 
rational  creatures  and  do  not  exist  for  their  own  sake. 
"  The  brute  creation  have  only  one  purpose,  and  that 
is  to  minister  to  man,  or  to  man's  temporary  abode." 
This  is  the  doctrine  set  forth  more  than  six  centuries 
ago  by  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  recently  expounded  by 
Dr.  Leopold  Schutz,  professor  in  the  theological  semi- 
nary at  Trier,  in  an  elaborate  work  entitled  The  So- 
called  Understanding  of  Animals  or  Animal  Instinct. 
This  writer  treats  the  theory  of  the  irrationality  of 
brutes  as  a  dogma  of  the  Church,  denouncing  all  who 
hold  that  the  mental  difference  between  man  and  beast 
is  one  of  degree,  and  not  of  kind,  as  "  enemies  of  the 


ETHICAL  RELATIONS  OF  MAN  TO^  BEAST.       97 

Christian  faith. "  ;  whereas  those  who  cHng  to  the  old 
notion  of  instinctive  or  automatic  action  in  explain- 
ing the  phenomena  of  animal  intelligence  are  extolled 
as  "  champions  of  pure  truth/' 

In  an  article  on  The  Lower  Animals,  in  the  Catholic 
Dictionary  of  W.  E.  Addis  and  T.  Arnold,  published 
in  1884,  it  is  maintained  that  "the  brutes  are  made 
for  man,  who  has  the  same  right  over  them  which  he 
has  over  plants  and  stones,"  and  that  it  is  lawful  for 
him  to  put  them  to  death  and  to  torment  them  "  even 
for  the  purposes  of  recreation."  A  similar  view  is  taken 
by  Philip  Austin  in  a  volume  on  Our  Duty  to  Animals 
(London,  1885),  in  which  the  author,  treating  the  sub- 
ject "in  the  light  of  Christian  philosophy,"  comes  to 
the  conclusion  "  that  kindness  to  the  brutes  is  a  mere 
work  of  supererogation." 

If  it  was  the  Creator's  intention  that  the  lower  ani- 
mals should  minister  to  man,  the  divine  plan  has  proved 
to  be  a  failure,  since  the  number  of  animals  which,  after 
centuries  of  effort,  he  has  succeeded  in  bringing  more 
or  less  under  his  dominion  is  extremely  snail.  Millions 
of  living  creatures  fly  in  the  air,  crawl  on  the  earth, 
dwell  in  the  waters,  and  roam  the  fields  and  the  forests, 
over  which  he  has  no  control  whatever.  Not  one  in 
twenty  thousand  is  fit  for  food,  and  of  those  which 
are  edible  he  does  not  actually  eat  more  than  one  in 
ten  thousand.  In  explanation  of  this  lack  of  effect- 
iveness in  the  enforcement  of  a  divine  decree,  it  has 
been  asserted  that  man  lost  his  dominion  over  the  lower 
world  to  a  great  extent  when  he  lost  dominion  over 
himself;  but  this  view  is  wholly  untenable  even  from 
a  biblical  standpoint,  inasmuch  as  the  promise  of  uni- 
versal   sovereignty    was    renewed    after    the    deluge 


98  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

and  expressed  in  even  stronger  terms  than  before  the 
falL 

Dugald  Stewart  admits  "  a  certain  latitude  of  action, 
which  enables  the  brutes  to  accommodate  themselves 
in  some  measure  to  their  accidental  situations."  In 
this  arrangement  he  sees  a  design  or  purpose  of  "  render- 
ing them,  in  consequence  of  this  power  of  accommoda- 
tion, incomparably  more  serviceable  to  our  race  than 
they  would  have  been  if  altogether  subjected,  like  mere 
matter,  to  the  influence  of  regular  and  assignable 
causes."  Of  the  value  of  this  power  of  adaptation  to 
the  animal  itself  in  the  struggle  for  existence  the 
Scotch  philosopher  had  no  conception. 

In  the  great  majority  of  treatises  on  moral  science, 
especially  in  such  as  base  their  teachings  on  distinctive- 
ly Christian  tenets,  there  is  seldom  any  allusion  to 
man's  duty  toward  animals.  Dr.  Wayland,  who  has 
perhaps  the  most  to  say  on  this  point,  sums  up  his 
remarks  in  a  note  apologetically  appended  to  the  body 
of  his  work.  He  denies  them  the  possession  of  "  any 
moral  faculty,"  and  declares  that  in  all  cases  "  our  right 
is  paramount  and  must  extinguish  theirs."  We  are  to 
treat  them  kindly,  feed  and  shelter  them  adequately, 
and  "kill  them  with  the  least  possible  pain."  To 
inflict  suffering  upon  them  for  our  amusement  is  wrong, 
since  it  tends  to  harden  men  and  render  them  brutal 
and  ferocious  in  temper. 

Dr.  Hickok  takes  a  similar  view  and  broadly  asserts 
that  "neither  animate  nor  inanimate  Nature  has  any 
rights,"  and  that  man  is  not  bound  to  it  "  by  any  duties 
for  its  own  sake.  ...  In  the  light  of  his  own  worthi- 
ness as  end,  ...  he  is  not  permitted  to  mar  the  face 
of  Nature,  nor  wantonly  and  uselessly  to  injure  any 


ETHICAL  RELATIONS  OF  MAN  TO  BEAST.       99 

of  her  products."  Maliciously  breaking  a  crystal,  de- 
facing a  gem,  girdling  a  tree,  crushing  a  flower,  paint- 
ing flaming  advertisements  on  rocks,  and  worrying  and 
torturing  animals  are  thus  placed  in  the  same  category 
as  acts  tending  to  degrade  man  ethically  and  aesthet- 
ically, rendering  him  coarse  and  rude,  and  making  him 
not  only  a  very  disagreeable  associate,  but  also,  in  the 
long  run,  "  an  unsafe  member  of  civil  society."  These 
things  are  considered  right  or  wrong  solely  from  the 
standpoint  of  their  influence  upon  human  elevation 
or  degradation.  "  Nature  possesses  no  product  too 
sacred  for  man.    All  Nature  is  for  man,  not  man  for  it." 

The  same  opinion  is  held  by  the  Jesuit,  Victor 
Cathrein,  who,  in  a  recently  published  review  of  Bregen- 
zer's  Thier-Ethik  (Stimmen  aus  Marien-Lach,  February 
7,  1895,  p.  164),  denies  that  man  has  any  duties  toward 
the  lower  animals,  and  asserts  that  any  cruelty  he 
may  inflict  upon  them  involves  no  moral  wrong  differ- 
ent in  kind  from  that  which  he  commits  in  wantonly 
tearing  or  dirtying  his  own  clothes.  According  to  this 
doctrine,  animals  have  no  more  rights  than  inanimate 
objects,  and  it  is  no  worse  from  an  ethical  point  of 
view  to  flay  the  forearm  of  an  ape  or  lacerate  the  leg 
of  a  dog  than  to  rip  open  the  sleeve  of  a  coat  or  rend 
a  pair  of  pantaloons.  The  plain  statement  of  such  a 
theory  is  its  sufficient  refutation,  and  we  doubt  whether 
even  such  a  severe  dogmatist  and  uncompromising  cham- 
pion of  Catholic  principles  as  Victor  Cathrein,  S.  J., 
would  be  able  to  witness  all  these  operations  with  equal 
equanimity. 

Man  is  as  truly  a  part  and  product  of  Nature  as  any 
other  animal,  and  this  attempt  to  set  him  up  on  an  iso- 
lated point  outside  of  it  is  philosophically  false  and 


100  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

morally  pernicious.  It  makes  fundamental  to  ethics  a 
principle  which  once  prevailed  universally  in  politics 
and  still  survives  in  the  legal  fiction  that  the  king  can 
do  no  ^Tong.  Louis  XIV  of  France  firmly  believed 
himself  to  be  the  rightful  and  absolute  owner  of  the 
lives  and  property  of  his  subjects.  He  held  that  his 
righi^s  as  monarch  were  paramount  and  extinguished 
theirs,  that  they  possessed  nothing  too  sacred  for  him, 
and  the  leading  moralists  and  statists  of  his  day  con- 
firmed him  in  this  extravagant  opinion  of  his  royal 
prerogatives.  All  the  outrages  which  the  mad  Czar, 
Ivan  the  Terrible,  perpetrated  on  the  inhabitants  of 
Novgorod  and  Moscow,  man  has  felt  and  for  the  most 
part  still  feels  himself  justified  in  inflicting  on  domestic 
animals  and  beasts  of  venery. 

It  is  only  within  the  last  century  that  legislators 
have  begun  to  recognise  the  claims  of  brutes  to  just 
treatment  and  to  enact  laws  for  their  protection.  Tor- 
turing a  beast,  if  punished  at  all,  was  treated  solely  as 
an  offence  against  property,  like  breaking  a  window, 
barking  a  tree,  or  committing  any  other  act  known 
in  Scotch  law  as  "  malicious  mischief."  It  was  regarded, 
not  as  a  wrong  done  to  the  suffering  animal,  but  as  an 
injury  done  to  its  owner,  which  could  be  made  good 
by  the  payment  of  money.  Not  until  a  little  more  than 
a  hundred  years  ago  was  such  an  act  changed  from  a 
civil  into  a  criminal  offence,  for  which  a  simple  fine 
was  not  deemed  a  sufficient  reparation.  It  was  thus 
placed  in  the  category  of  crimes  which,  like  arson,  bur- 
glary, and  murder,  are  wrongs  against  society,  for  which 
no  pecuniary  restitution  or  compensation  can  make 
adequate  atonement. 

Even  this  legislative  reform  is  by  no  means  universal. 


ETHICAL  RELATIONS  OF  MAN  TO  BEAST.     101 

The  criminal  code  of  the  German  Empire  still  punishes 
with  a  fine  of  not  more  than  fifty  thalers  any  person 
"  who  publicly,  or  in  such  wise  as  to  excite  scandal,  ma- 
liciously tortures  or  barbarously  maltreats  animals/' 
This  sort  of  cruelty  is  classified  with  drawing  plans  of 
fortresses,  using  official  stamps  and  seals,  and  putting 
royal  or  princely  coats  of  arms  on  signs  without  per- 
mission, making  noises  which  disturb  the  public  peace, 
and  playing  games  of  hazard  on  the  streets  or  market 
places.  The  man  is  punished,  not  because  he  puts  the 
animal  to  pain,  but  because  his  conduct  is  offensive 
to  his  fellow-men  and  wounds  their  sensibilities.  The 
law  sets  no  limit  to  his  cruelty,  provided  he  may  prac- 
tise it  in  private. 

Again,  in  all  enactments  regulating  the  transporta- 
tion of  live  stock  our  legislation  is  still  exceedingly  de- 
fective. The  great  majority  of  people  have  no  con- 
ception of  the  unnecessary  and  almost  incredible  suffer- 
ing inflicted  by  man  upon  the  lower  animals  in  merely 
conveying  them  from  one  place  to  another  in  order 
to  meet  the  demands  of  the  market.  It  is  well  known 
that  German  shippers  of  sheep  to  England  often  lose 
one  third  of  their  consignment  by  suffocation,  owing 
to  overcrowding  and  imperfect  ventilation.  Beasts  are 
still  made  to  endure  all  the  horrors  to  which  slavers 
were  once  wont  to  subject  their  cargoes  of  human  chat- 
tels in  stifling  holds  on  the  notorious  "  middle  passage." 
(Some  conception  of  the  cruelties  involved  in  this 
traffic  may  be  obtained  by  reading  Samuel  Plimsoll's 
little  volume  entitled  Cattle  Ships,  published  in  London 
in  1890.) 

The  late  Henry  Bergh  states  that  the  loss  on  cattle 
by  "  shrinkage  "  in  transporting  them  from  the  West- 


102  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

ern  to  the  Eastern  portion  of  the  United  States  is  from 
ten  to  fifteen  per  cent.  The  average  shrinkage  of  an 
ox  is  one  hundred  and  twenty  pounds,  and  that  of  a 
sheep  or  hog  from  fifteen  to  twenty  pounds;  and  the 
annual  loss  in  money  arising  from  this  cause  is  estimated 
at  more  than  forty  million  dollars.  The  amount  of 
animal  suffering  which  these  statistics  imply  is  fearful 
to  contemplate.  Here  and  there  a  solitary  voice  is  heard 
in  our  legislative  halls  protesting  against  the  horrors 
of  this  traffic,  hut  so  powerful  is  the  lobhy  influence 
of  wealthy  corporations  that  no  law  can  be  passed  to 
prevent  them.  Not  a  word  ever  falls  from  the  pulpit 
in  rebuke  of  such  barbarity;  meanwhile  the  railroad  mag- 
nates pay  liberal  pew  rents  out  of  the  profits,  and  listen 
with  complacency  one  day  in  the  week  to  denunciations 
of  Jeroboam's  idolatry  and  the  wicked  deeds  of  Ahab 
and  Ahaziah,  as  recorded  in  the  chronicles  of  the  kings 
of  Israel. 

The  horse,  one  of  the  noblest  and  most  sensitive  of 
domestic  animals,  is  put  to  all  kinds  of  torture  by  dock- 
ing, pricking,  clipping,  peppering,  and  the  use  of  bear- 
ing reins  solely  to  gratify  human  vanity.  As  a  reward 
for  severe  and  faithful  toil  he  is  often  fed  with  un- 
wholesome and  insufficient  fodder  on  the  economical 
principle  announced  by  the  manager  of  a  New  York 
tramway  that  "horses  are  cheaper  than  oats."  It  is 
an  actual  fact,  verified  by  Henry  Bergh,  that  the  horses 
of  this  large  corporation  were  fed  on  a  mixture  of  meal, 
gypsum,  and  marble  dust,  until  the  Society  for  the  Pre- 
vention of  Cruelty  to  Animals  interfered  and  finally 
succeeded  in  putting  a  stop  to  the  practice. 

The  Americans,  as  a  people,  are  notorious  for  the 
recklessness  with  which  they  squander  the  products  of 


ETHICAL  RELATIONS  OP  MAN  TO  BEAST.     103 

iN'ature,  of  which  their  country  is  so  exceedingly  pro- 
lific. This  extravagance  extends  to  all  departments  of 
public,  social,  and  domestic  life.  No  land  less  rich  in 
material  resources  could  have  borne  for  any  length  of 
time  the  wretched  mismanagement  of  its  finances  to 
which  the  United  States  has  been  subjected  ever  since 
and  even  before  the  close  of  the  civil  war.  There  is  not 
a  government  in  Europe  that  would  not  have  been 
broken  down  and  rendered  bankrupt  by  the  tremendous 
and  wholly  unnecessary  strain  put  upon  it  by  crass  igno- 
rance of  the  most  elementary  principles  of  finance  and 
demagogical  tampering  with  the  public  credit.  The 
same  wasteful  spirit  involves  also,  as  we  have  seen, 
immense  suffering  to  animals  on  the  part  of  soulless 
and  unscrupulous  corporations,  in  which  intense  greed 
of  gain  is  not  mitigated  by  the  influence  of  individual 
kindness,  and  by  which  horses  are  treated  as  mere 
machines,  to  be  worked  to  their  utmost  capacity  at  the 
smallest  expense,  and  neat  cattle  as  so  much  butcher's 
meat  to  be  brought  to  market  in  the  quickest  and  cheap- 
est manner. 

Erasmus  Darwin,  in  his  Phytologia,  or  the  Philoso- 
phy of  Agriculture  and  Gardening  (London,  1800),  en- 
deavours to  vindicate  the  goodness  of  God  in  permitting 
the  destruction  of  the  lower  by  the  higher  animals  on 
the  ground  that  "more  pleasurable  sensation  exists  in 
the  world,  as  the  organic  matter  is  taken  from  a  state 
of  less  irritability  and  less  sensibility  and  converted 
into  a  greater."  By  this  arrangement,  he  thinks,  the 
supreme  sum  of  possible  happiness  is  secured  to  sentient 
beings.  Thus  it  may  be  disagreeable  for  the  mouse  to 
be  caught  and  converted  into  the  flesh  of  the  cat,  for 
the  lamb  to  be  devoured  by  the  wolf,  for  the  toad  to 


104  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

be  swallowed  by  the  serpent,  and  for  sheep,  swine,  and 
kine  to  be  served  up  as  roasts  and  ragouts  for  man; 
but  in  all  such  cases,  he  argues,  the  pain  inflicted  is  far 
less  than  the  amount  of  pleasure  ultimately  procured. 
But  how  is  it  when  a  finely  organized  human  being, 
with  infinite  capabilities  of  happiness  in  its  highest 
forms,  is  suddenly  transmuted  into  the  bodily  substance 
of  a  boa  constrictor  or  a  tiger?  No  one  will  seriously 
assert  that  the  drosera,  Dioncea  muscipula,  and  other 
insectivorous  and  carnivorous  plants  are  organisms 
superior  in  sensitiveness  to  those  which  they  devour, 
or  that  this  transformation  of  animal  into  vegetable 
structure  increases  the  sum  of  pleasurable  sensation 
m  the  world.  The  doctrine  of  evolution,  which  regards 
these  antagonisms  as  mere  episodes  in  the  universal 
struggle  for  existence,  has  forever  set  aside  this  sort 
of  theodicy  and  put  an  end  to  all  teleological  attempts 
to  infer  from  the  nature  and  operations  of  creation  the 
moral  character  of  the  Creator. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


METEMPSYCHOSIS. 


TTniversality  of  the  belief  in  the  transmigration  of  souls.  Concep- 
tion of  immortality  among  primitive  tribes.  Strong  faith  of 
the  savage.  Filial  affection  as  exemplified  by  parricide.  Per- 
sistence of  the  dogma  of  metempsychosis.  Traces  of  it  in  Ju- 
daism and  Christianity.  Elect  Israelitic  souls.  Metempsy- 
chosis taught  by  the  Manicha?ans  and  used  by  Origen  to 
explain  divine  predestination.  Pre-existence  held  by  Pytha- 
goras, Plato,  and  other  Greek  philosophers  and  assumed  to  be 
true  by  Jesus.  Augustine's  commentary  on  the  Golden  Ass  of 
Appuleius.  Goethe's  confession.  Appuleius  and  Czeslav  Czyn- 
ski  as  hypnotizers.  Relation  of  zoolatry  to  metempsychosis. 
Animals  as  incarnations  of  ghosts  and  demons.  Metempsy- 
chosis as  the  metaphorical  expression  of  human  aspiration  and 
evolution.  The  spiritual  law  of  like  seeking  1  ke  in  the  prede- 
termination of  character.  Indian  conception  of  fate  and  free 
will  illustrated  by  modern  statistics  of  crime,  suicide,  and 
other  social  phenomena.  Plato's  theory  of  the  origin  of  intui- 
tive knowledge.  "  Essential  spissitude."  Lessing  on  the  pos- 
sibility of  more  than  five  senses  in  man.  Neo-Lamarckism. 
Pervading  influence  of  psnthfism  in  the  Orient.  Indian  athe- 
ists. Brahmanical  and  Buddhistic  eschatology :  absorption 
and  extinction  of  the  individual  soul  as  the  radical  cure  of 
egotism.  Paul  and  Nanak.  The  pantheistic  compared  with 
the  Christian  scheme  of  salvation  from  an  ethical  point  of 
view.  Transmigration  of  souls  and  transmutation  of  species. 
Conservation  of  force  and  imperishableness  of  spirit.  Thomas 
Aquinas's  untenable  distinction  between  human  and  sub- 
human souls.  Moral  bearing  of  metempsychosis.  Orientals 
in  their  treatment  of  animals  not  alwavs  true  to  their  religious 
105 


106  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

precepts.  Protection  of  animals  as  property.  Panpsychic 
--  philosophy.  Societies  for  the  prevention  of  cruelty  to  animals. 
Hospitals  for  beasts  in  India.  Monier  Williams's  description 
of  the  Panjara  Pol.  Mantegazza's  account  of  such  an  insti- 
tution. The  "Bai  Sakarbai."  King  Thibo  and  Barnum. 
European  hospitals  for  animals.  The  New  York  Veterinaiy 
Hospital.  Lecky's  observations.  Oriental  and  Occidental 
treatment  of  animals  contrasted.  Lack  of  pertinent  biblical 
texts.  Quandary  of  a  Protestant  parson.  Deficiencies  of  He- 
brew and  Christian  Scriptures.  Animals  in  hagiology.  Eccle- 
siastical excommunication  of  animals.  Festivals  of  St.  An- 
thony in  Rome  and  of  St.  Leonard  in  Tolz.  Legends  of  St. 
Francis  of  Assisi.  Indifference  of  the  Catholic  Church  to  the 
sufferings  of  animals.  Dictum  of  Pius  the  Ninth.  Its  prac- 
tical application  by  Italians.  Spanish  bullfights  and  the 
popes.  Beneficent  influence  of  evolutionary  science  and  com- 
parative psychology  upon  the  humane  treatment  of  animals. 

It  is  especially  in  man's  conception  of  his  relations 
to  the  lower  animals  and  of  the  character  and  degree 
of  their  psychical  development  and  mental  endowment 
that  anthropocentric  prejudices  and  prepossessions  con- 
tinue to  exert  a  perverting  and  pernicious  influence. 

Opposed  to  this  tendency,  both  as  a  philosophical 
principle  and  in  its  bearings  on  practical  ethics,  is  the 
doctrine  of  the  transmigration  of  souls.  If  the  truth 
of  a  tenet  may  be  determined  by  the  majority  of  suf- 
frages in  its  favour,  if  the  validity  of  a  theory  bears  any 
proportion  to  the  number  of  persons  who  have  ac- 
cepted it  and  found  comfort  and  consolation  in  it,  if 
the  famous  test  quod  semper,  quod  uhique,  quod  ab  om- 
nibus, which  the  Eomish  Church  has  made  the  cri- 
terion of  its  own  claim  to  catholicity,  has  any  force  or 
fitness  as  furnishing  a  ground  of  belief,  it  would  be 
difficult  to  discover  among  the  multiform  creeds  of 
mankind  any  doctrine  resting  upon  a  broader  and  firmer 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  107 

foundation  than  that  which  is  known  as  metempsy- 
chosis. 

Indeed,  if  such  indorsement  is  to  be  regarded  as 
any  proof  of  genuineness,  this  theory  may  be  said,  with- 
out exaggeration,  to  be  stamped  with  the  seal  of  almost 
universal  consent,  since  it  has  been  found  to  be  inherent 
in  or  engrafted  upon  nearly  every  known  school  of 
philosophy  and  system  of  religion,  and  to  have  been 
held,  in  some  of  its  varied  forms,  by  men  in  all  ages, 
in  all  lands,  in  all  conditions  of  life,  and  in  all  stages 
of  barbarism  and  civilization. 

The  belief  in  the  transmigration  of  souls  and  in 
their  progressive  improvement  through  successive  stages 
of  incarnation  is  common  to  the  aboriginal  tribes  of 
every  land,  and  may  be  regarded  as  the  earliest  and 
most  general  form  in  which  the  conception  of  immor- 
tality takes  expression.  To  the  mind  of  the  primitive 
man  the  idea  of  the  continued  existence  of  the  soul 
in  a  disembodied  state  is  utterly  incomprehensible,  and 
would  be  equivalent  to  its  permanent  extinction.  After 
having  come  in  contact  with  Europeans  and  learned 
to  appreciate  their  superiority,  the  negro's  ideal  of  im- 
mortality is  to  animate,  after  death,  the  body  of  a 
white  man.  One  of  the  strongest  incentives  of  the 
savage  to  distinguish  himself  in  battle  is  the  hope  of 
being  rewarded  for  his  prowess  by  being  born  again 
into  a  higher  tribal  position  as  a  mighty  chieftain  or 
a  powerful  medicine  man.  So  firm  is  his  conviction 
of  this  possibility,  that  he  often  courts  danger  and  craves 
death  in  order  to  better  his  condition  by  a  new  birth. 

Culture  is  critical  and  sceptical  in  its  relations  to 
the  unseen  world  and  touching  all  that  lies  beyond 
the  bourn  of  the  present  life.    Only  barbarism  is  capable 


108  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

of  begetting  the  intense  and  implicit  faith  that  never 
questions  the  words  of  the  priest  or  suspects  the  wiles 
of  the  wizard.  This  crass  credulity  is  characteristic  of 
infant  intelligence,  and  disappears  with  the  mental 
growth  and  maturity  of  the  race.  Where  it  exists  in  full 
force  it  always  produces  a  fearlessness  bordering  on 
fanaticism,  as  in  the  soldiery  of  the  Sikh  Guru  and 
the  Mohammedan  Mahdi,  or  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Congo  negress,  who  put  such  perfect  confidence  in  the 
protecting  power  of  her  fetiches,  that  she  unhesitat- 
ingly placed  her  foot  on  a  block  and  permitted  it  to 
be  struck  off  with  an  ax,  and  could  hardly  believe  that 
amulets  and  charms  had  failed  to  prevent  the  natural 
effects  of  the  blow.  The  same  amount  of  superstitious 
assurance  in  a  civilized  man  w^ould  be  regarded  as  con- 
clusive proof  of  his  insanity.  We  have  an  example 
of  this  kind  in  the  sect  known  as  the  "  peculiar  people,'* 
who,  not  having  outgrown  the  healing  methods  en- 
joined and  employed  by  the  Christian  Church  in  the 
first  century,  are  constantly  coming  into  conflict  with 
the  hygienic  regulations  established  and  enforced  by 
Christian  governments  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

With  what  unwavering  trust  the  old  German  war- 
rior had  his  weapons,  his  wives,  his  horses,  and  his 
slaves  buried  in  his  dolmen,  never  doubting  that  they 
would  go  with  him  and  be  ready  for  his  service  in  the 
next  world!  He  was  the  best  and  foremost  man  of  his 
time;  but  should  one  of  his  descendants  of  to-day  at- 
tempt to  express  in  like  manner  his  firm  faith  in  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  he  would  be  denounced  as  a 
dangerous  religious  "  crank,"  and  summarily  arrested 
by  the  police.  In  Polynesia  it  was  thought  to  be  the 
duty  of  the  child  to  put  the  parents  to  death  as  soon 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  109 

as  the  physical  powers  began  to  show  symptoms  of 
decay.  The  purpose  of  the  parricide  was  not  to  rid 
liimself  of  a  burden,  but  sprung  solely  from  feelings  of 
filial  affection  and  prescriptive  obligation,  and  from 
the  desire  that  his  parents  might  escape  the  infirmities 
of  old  age  and  enter  in  full  vigour  upon  the  future 
life.  The  parents  consented  to  the  act  and  were  happy 
in  the  prospect  of  speedy  rejuvenation  in  the  realms 
of  the  blest.  So,  too,  among  the  Battas  of  Sumatra, 
a  gentle  and  kindly  race,  the  father,  when  he  feels  the 
signs  of  approaching  old  age,  begs  his  sons  to  kill  and 
eat  him.  On  the  day  appointed  for  the  performance 
of  this  filial  duty,  the  old  man  climbs  up  into  a  tree, 
round  which  his  sons  stand,  beating  upon  the  trunk 
and  singing  a  sort  of  dirge,  the  burden  of  which  is: 
"  The  season  has  come,  the  fruit  is  ripe  and  must  fall." 
Thereupon  the  old  man  descends,  and  is  solemnly  slain 
and  lovingly  devoured.  But  where  is  the  Christian, 
however  zealous  and  sincere,  who  would  run  so  great 
a  risk,  or  whose  faith  in  the  resurrection  of  the  dead 
and  the  life  everlasting  would  stand  such  a  terrible 
test?  If  he  could  be  found,  his  proper  place  would  be, 
not  in  the  sanctuary  of  the  saints,  but  in  an  asylum  for 
the  insane. 

Metempsychosis  is  not  merely  a  dogma  of  the  past 
or  lingering  survival  of  primidve  beliefs.  It  is  still  a 
living  psychological  principle  and  practical  precept  of 
religion,  and  numbers  its  adherents  by  millions,  includ- 
ing all  grades  of  enlightenment,  from  the  African  or 
Australian  savage  to  the  Oriental  sage,  and  all  degrees 
and  developments  of  spiritual  aspiration,  from  the 
rudest  rubbish  worship  of  the  Loango  fetichist  to  the 
most  refined  mysticism  of  the  European  philosopher.    It 


110  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

appears  with  the  earliest  dawn  of  Indian  speculation,  and 
pervades  the  whole  vast,  subtile,  and  complicated  web 
of  Brahmanical  metaphysics.  It  is  the  central  and 
sustaining  root  of  that  widespreading  banyan  of  Bud- 
dhistic ethics,  which  extends  its  ample  and  hospitable 
shade  over  the  entire  realm  of  animated  nature,  and 
gives  impartial  shelter  and  protection  to  every  form 
of  animal  life.  It  constituted  an  integral  part  of  the 
priestly  wisdom  of  Egypt,  fragments  of  which  have 
been  preserved  and  transmitted  to  us  in  the  so-called 
Book  of  the  Dead.  The  custom  of  embalming  the  de- 
ceased grew  out  of  the  belief  that  the  souls  of  the  de- 
parted would,  after  long  wanderings  and  numerous 
transformations,  return  to  re-inhabit  their  human 
bodies,  and  undergo  again  in  this  form  various  trials 
and  purifications  preparatory  to  a  final  and  eternal 
union  with  Osiris.  According  to  Herodotus  (ii,  123), 
this  transmigration  embraced  in  its  circuit  the  prin- 
cipal animals  of  the  earth,  the  sea,  and  the  air,  and  took 
three  thousand  years  for  its  accomplishment.  Plastic 
and  pictorial  illustrations  of  this  doctrine  are  found  on 
Egyptian  monuments  and  papyri,  as,  for  example,  where 
the  soul  of  a  glutton  is  represented  as  being  borne  to 
Hades  in  the  form  of  a  hog. 

Even  the  Jews,  notwithstanding  the  essential  in- 
consistency of  the  theory  of  transmigration  with  their 
cosmogony  and  the  prevailing  spirit  of  their  sacred 
scriptures,  borrowed  it,  together  with  the  conception 
of  a  future  life,  from  their  conquerors  during  the  Baby- 
lonian captivity;  and  a  tenderer  feeling  toward  the 
lower  animals  is  clearly  perceptible  among  them  in 
consequence  of  their  long  and  intimate  contact  with 
Assyrian  and  Persian  ideas  and  habits  of  thought.    It 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  HI 

finds,  therefore,  as  one  would  naturally  expect,  its 
most  frequent  expression  and  fullest  unfolding  in  the 
apochryphal  and  exegetical  literature  of  the  Hebrews, 
while  in  the  so-called  canonical  writings  there  are  only 
faint  and  comparatively  few  traces  of  it.  Thus  the 
author  of  the  Book  of  Wisdom  says  of  himself:  "  I  was 
a  well-conditioned  child  and  had  received  a  good  soul; 
and,  since  I  was  still  good,  I  went  into  an  immaculate 
body."  The  Cabala  declares  still  more  emphatically 
that  "all  souls  are  subject  to  the  trials  of  transmigra- 
tion." The  Talmud  reiterates  the  same  thought.  Many 
of  the  most  eminent  rabbis  taught  that  the  souls  of  men 
are  sometimes  condemned  to  inhabit  the  bodies  of 
women  as  a  punishment  for  sins  of  effeminacy  and  for 
mean  and  unmanly  deeds,  thus  producing  such  mon- 
strosities as  amazons  and  viragoes.  They  also  ascribed 
barrenness  in  women  to  the  penal  possession  of  a  male 
soul,  in  which  case  she  was  enjoined  to  entreat  the 
Lord  to  pardon  her  offence,  committed  in  a  former 
body,  and  graciously  to  grant  her  the  powor  of  child- 
bearing  by  endowing  her  with  scintillations  of  a  female 
soul.  They  maintained,  furthermore,  that  in  the  be- 
ginning God  created  a  certain  number  of  Jew  souls 
as  his  elect,  and  that  these  souls  constantly  return  to 
animate  the  bodies  of  successive  generations  of  the 
chosen  people,  and  will  remain  a  select  source  of  spirit- 
ual supply  as  long  as  the  seed  of  Abraham  continues 
to  dwell  upon  the  earth.  This  is  also  supposed  to  ac- 
count for  the  rare  persistency  of  race  peculiarities 
which  characterizes  Israelites.  According  to  this  theory, 
Jew  souls  never  stray  into  Gentile  bodies,  though  they 
are  frequently  made  to  atone  for  their  sins  by  becom- 
ing incarnate  in  beasts.     It  is  also  stated  that  when 


112  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

this  process  of  transmigration  and  purification  is  com- 
plete, and  every  Jew  soul  animates  the  body  of  a  just 
Jew,  then  the  end  of  the  world  will  come.  It  might 
seem  to  many  that  to  make  this  final  event  dependent 
upon  such  a  remarkable  concurrence  of  circumstances 
and  happy  condition  of  things  would  be  equivalent  to 
its  indefinite  postponement. 

Of  all  Christian  sectaries,  the  Manichseans  were 
most  considerate  and  careful  of  the  lower  animals,  and 
this  kindly  attitude  of  mind  was  due,  in  a  large  meas- 
ure, to  the  strong  admixture  of  Oriental  ideas  in  their 
system  of  belief.  They  held  that  the  souls  of  men 
undergo  transformations,  passing  successively  into  the 
bodies  of  beasts  and  birds  and  reptiles,  partly  as  a 
method  of  punishment  and  partly  as  a  means  of  growth 
and  a  process  of  purgation  from  the  spiritually  con- 
taminating lusts  of  the  flesh.  Finally,  after  having 
been  bathed  in  the  sacred  water  of  the  moon  and 
burned  in  the  sacred  fire  of  the  sun  and  thus  cleansed 
from  all  traces  of  material  pollution,  they  become  fit 
for  admission,  as  pure  spiritual  essence,  into  the  world 
of  everlasting  light. 

Metempsychosis  was  also  taught  by  Origen,  who 
found  in  this  doctrine  a  convenient  master-key  to  the 
hidden  meaning  of  many  strange  events  and  difficult 
passages  of  Scripture.  Thus  he  explains  the  prenatal 
struggle  of  Esau  and  Jacob  in  the  womb  of  Kebekah  as 
the  revival  and  continuation  of  a  pre-existent  enmity 
between  them.  The  Lord  likewise  ordained  Jeremiah 
to  be  a  prophet  unto  the  nations,  while  he  was  yet  un- 
born, because,  as  is  expressly  stated,  he  had  known 
and  tried  him  in  a  previous  state  of  being.  Predestina- 
tion, in  Origen's  opinion,  could  be  brought  into  har- 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  113 

mony  with  divine  justice  only  on  the  same  principle. 
God^s  discrimination  between  persons  before  their 
birth,  foreordaining  the  one  to  everlasting  life  and  the 
other  to  everlasting  death,  he  held  to  be  an  outrageous 
wrong  and  an  act  of  unpardonable  favouritism,  unless 
justified  by  their  known  character  and  antecedent  con- 
duct and  their  good  or  evil  propensities  as  manifested 
in  a  former  existence.  To  this  most  genial  and  thought- 
ful theologian  of  the  Eastern  church  the  rigorous 
dogma  of  the  divine  decrees,  as  imphed  in  PauFs  meta- 
phor of  the  potter  and  the  clay,  was  tyrannous  and 
atrocious,  and  he  took  refuge  from  it  in  the  intricate 
mazes  of  Buddhistic  psychology  and  ethics. 

This  view  of  predestination  would  relieve  it,  in  a 
certain  degree,  of  its  arbitrary  and  unjust  character 
and  establish  a  causal  connection  between  the  past 
conduct  of  the  person,  rewarded  or  punished,  and  his 
future  condition.  The  divine  decree  would  resolve  itself 
into  fate,  and  a  man's  fate,  says  an  Indian  sage,  is  the 
resultant  of  his  deeds  committed  in  a  former  body. 

Origen  held,  too,  that  the  story  of  t]ie  garden  of 
Eden  is  an  account  of  the  life  of  our  first  parents  in 
a  previous  state  of  existence,  in  which  they  fell  into  sin 
through  disobedience  and  were  condemned  to  dwell  in 
human  bodies.  The  passage  in  which  God  is  said 
to  have  made  "  coats  of  slrns "  for  Adam  and  Eve 
"and  clothed  them,"  means  that  he  vestured  them 
with  mortal  flesh  as  a  punishment  for  their  transgres- 
sion. According  to  this  theory,  which  is  as  radically 
pessimistic  as  any  tenet  of  Buddhism,  man  became  in- 
carnated and,  as  it  were,  incarcerated  in  his  present 
physical  form  in  consequence  of  a  curse,  and  his  whole 
life  on  earth  is  that  of  a  convict  in  a  penal  colony,  and 


114  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

the  chief  end  of  his  endeavours  and  aspirations  should 
be  to  obtain  pardon  and  redemption  by  winning  the 
favour  of  the  Almighty  King  who  placed  him  in  this 
durance  vile. 

Pythagoras  claimed  to  have  a  distinct  recollection 
of  his  pre-existent  actions  and  experiences.  Socrates 
maintained  that  all  acquisition  of  knowledge  or  learn- 
ing is  nothing  but  remembering — rj  fji,d$y]crL<s  6vk  aXXo  tl  ^ 
dvdfjLvrja-LS.  Plato  would  condemn  all  cowardly  and  effemi- 
nate men,  such  as  dandies  and  dudes,  to  be  re-born  as 
women;  frivolous  and  flighty  and  feather-brained  per- 
sons, to  become  birds;  those  who  neglect  the  study 
of  philosophy  and  seek  only  sensual  indulgence,  to  be 
transformed  into  beasts;  and  the  dull  and  foolish,  to 
descend  to  the  lower  level  of  fishes  and  mollusks.  He 
states,  however,  that  Orpheus  reappeared  as  a  swan, 
and  Thamyris  as  a  nightingale  at  their  own  request 
a  thousand  years  after  their  death.  Aristotle  held  that 
the  souls  of  poets  are  fond  of  taking  bodily  form  again 
as  cygnets;  and  Horace  celebrates  in  an  ode  (ii,  20) 
his  own  apokyknosis  or  swan  re-incarnation,  and  re- 
joices in  the  prospect  of  putting  on  feathers  and  soar- 
ing through  the  argent  fields  of  air  on  the  twofold 
pinions  of  bird  and  bard. 

Jesus  and  his  disciples  seem  to  have  assumed,  at  least 
on  one  occasion,  that  a  person  might  suffer  afflictions  in 
this  body  as  a  punishment  for  sins  committed  by  him 
before  his  birth  or  in  a  former  state  of  conscious  and 
responsible  existence.  Thus,  we  are  told  that  as  they 
passed  by  and  saw  a  man  that  was  blind  from  his  birth, 
"his  disciples  asked  him,  saying.  Master,  who  did  sin, 
this  man  or  his  parents,  that  he  was  born  blind?  "  (John 
ix,  2).    In  his  reply  Jesus  admits  implicitly  that  both 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  115 

of  these  hypotheses  are  legitimate  and  adequate  to  ac- 
count for  the  given  phenomenon,  and  only  denies  their 
applicability  to  this  particular  case  of  physical  infirmity. 
In  the  same  connection,  Jesus  asserts  concerning  him- 
self that  he  existed  before  Abraham  was.  The  state- 
ment in  this  passage  and  in  others  of  a  similar  char- 
acter, which  have  been  usually  interpreted  as  referring 
to  his  eternal  Godhead,  could  be  far  more  easily  and 
rationally  explained  as  expressions  of  his  belief  in  the 
pre-existence  of  the  soul. 

St.  Augustine  maintained  that  men  might  be 
changed  into  beasts  by  sorcery,  and  even  suggested, 
not  sarcastically,  but  seriously,  that  the  Golden  Ass  of 
Apuleius  might  be  autobiographical,  the  author  de- 
scribing his  adventures  in  that  state,  whereinto,  by  the 
evil  arts  of  an  enchantress,  he  had  been  actually  "  trans- 
lated," like  Bottom  in  the  play.  "In  certain  districts 
of  Italy,"  he  adds,  "  such  occurrences  are  quite  fre- 
quent. The  women,  who  tend  the  herds,  prepare  with 
magic  rites  a  kind  of  cheese,  which  they  give  to  travel- 
lers to  eat  and  thus  change  them  into  beas  s  of  burden, 
in  which  shape  they  are  made  to  bear  heavy  loads  and 
perform  other  onerous  tasks." 

According  to  one  tradition,  Apuleius  wished  to 
become  a  creature  with  wings,  but  the  malicious  witches 
Meroe  and  Panthia,  who  seem  to  have  been  fond  of 
playing  practical  jokes  at  others'  expense,  rubbed  him 
with  an  ointment  which  changed  him  into  an  ass,  doubt- 
less thinking  that  this  would  be  the  easiest  and  most 
natural  metamorphosis  of  a  man  who  could  make  such 
a  request.  Lucian,  from  whom  Apuleius  derived  most 
of  the  material  for  his  famous  romance,  imagines  him- 
self in  one  of  his  satirical  dialogues  undergoing  a  like 


116  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

transformation  through  the  conjurations  of  a  Thes- 
salian  sorceress;  and  Boethius,  in  his  Consolation  of 
Philosophy,  describes  similar  metamorphoses:  "  One 
man,"  he  says,  "  takes  the  form  of  a  boar,  another  that 
of  a  Marmarian  lion,  others  become  howling  wolves 
and  fierce  tigers." 

Appuleius  himself  was  a  Platonist  with  a  strong 
tendency  to  mysticism,  and  had  the  reputation  of  being 
a  powerful  magician.  He  was  once  brought  to  trial  on 
the  charge  of  having  exercised  this  occult  and  uncanny 
faculty  in  what  the  Scotch  would  call  an  exceedingly 
canny  way,  by  "  enchanting  "  a  rich  widow  and  induc- 
ing her  to  marry  him,  to  the  great  detriment  and  in- 
tense disgust  of  the  heirs  presumptive,  who  instituted 
a  suit  for  damages.  The  court  decided  that,  however 
irresistible  may  have  been  the  influence  he  exerted  in 
winning  the  affections  of  the  lady,  there  was  no  ground 
for  supposing  that  he  had  resorted  to  wizardry  or  any 
forbidden  form  of  fascination.  Eomantic  sentiment, 
in  the  opinion  of  the  learned  judge,  sufficed  to  account 
for  the  attachment  without  the  intervention  of  necro- 
mantic arts. 

Perhaps  the  charm  might  have  been  explained,  as 
Goethe,  in  a  letter  to  Wieland,  was  fain  to  account  for 
the  ascendency  gained  over  him  by  Frau  von  Stein, 
on  the  theory  of  metempsychosis:  "Yes,"  he  exclaims, 
"  we  were  formerly  man  and  wife."  If  this  be  so,  one 
may  naturally  wonder  what  fatal  act  it  was  of  his  in 
that  previous  life  that  prevented  the  renewal  of  this 
pre-existent  union  and  condemned  him  here  to  the 
conjugal  care  and  companionship  of  Christine  Vulpius. 

A  case  quite  similar  to  that  recorded  of  Apuleius 
occurred    in    December,    1894,    at    Munich,    Bavaria, 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  117 

where  a  Polish  adventurer  and  itinerant  practitioner 
of  hypnotism  and  magnetism  was  accused,  as  the  in- 
dictment runs,  of  having  "  inspired  a  lady  with  irresisti- 
ble love  through  post-hypnotic  suggestion  in  hypnotic 
sleep,  and  thus  enabled  himself  to  enter  into  the  most 
intimate  relations  with  her,  and  then  by  the  same 
means  deprived  her  of  all  recollection  of  what  had  taken 
place,  thus  causing  her  to  deny  that  she  had  ever 
been  hypnotized  by  him."  The  lady  was  Baroness  von 
Zedlitz,  a  wealthy  spinster  of  thirty-eight,  whose  prop- 
erty the  defendant,  Czeslav  Czynski,  who  had  a  wife 
still  living,  attempted  to  get  into  his  possession  by  a 
sham  marriage,  at  which  a  certain  Stanislaus  Wartalski 
officiated  as  priest  under  the  name  of  Simon  Werthe- 
mann,  D.  D.,  signing  and  sealing  the  marriage  certifi- 
cate and  carrying  the  feint  and  fraud  so  far  as  to  toast 
the  newly  wedded  couple  as  "  duke "  and  "  duchess " 
at  the  wedding  dinner,  which  immediately  followed 
the  ceremony.  The  trial  lasted  several  days  and  ended 
in  the  condemnation  of  Czynski  to  three  years'  im- 
prisonment and  five  years'  infamy,  not.  however,  on 
the  main  accusation,  of  which  the  jury  acquitted  him, 
but  on  the  collateral  charges  of  instigation  to  an  offence 
against  public  order  by  the  assumption  of  a  public  office 
and  the  use  of  a  forged  public  document. 

It  is  interesting  and  iistructive  to  note  how  ex- 
tensively the  idea  of  metempsychosis  permeates  and 
impregnates  popular  tales  and  superstitions.  Mytholo- 
gy and  folklore  are  full  of  stories  of  such  transforma- 
tions and  transmigrations,  the  human  soul  entering 
into  a  flower,  a  shrub,  a  tree,  a  butterfly,  a  bird,  a  beast, 
or  a  reptile.  In  the  Song  of  Eoncesvalles  a  blackthorn 
is  said  to  spring  from  the  body  of  each  painim  who 


118  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

fell  in  battle,  and  a  white  flower  of  heavenly  perfume 
from  the  head  of  every  Christian  warrior  slain.  The 
belief  that  the  souls  of  the  dead  inhabit  various  plants, 
especially  the  rose,  the  lily,  the  linden,  and  the  elder, 
is  as  old  and  widely  diffused  as  the  Aryan  race. 

Zoolatry  or  animal  worship  stands  in  intimate  rela- 
tion to  metempsychosis.  The  primitive  man  was  puz- 
zled by  the  mysterious  origin  and  nature  of  the  lower 
animals  and  by  the  equally  mysterious  phenomenon 
of  death  and  by  the  thoughts  to  which  this  event  gave 
rise  touching  the  departure  and  destiny  of  the  soul. 
These  two  great  mysteries  were  made  to  explain  each 
other,  the  spirit  of  the  man  passing  into  the  body  of 
the  animal,  whose  chief  qualities  he  shared  and  to 
which  he  would,  therefore,  be  drawn  by  the  strongest 
ties  of  affinity.  Beasts  of  prey,  which  feed  on  human 
flesh,  were  especial  objects  of  worship,  because  they  were 
supposed  to  be  habitations  of  the  spirits  of  the  persons 
whom  they  had  devoured,  and  it  was  deemed  desirable 
to  propitiate  and  appease  these  angry  ghosts. 

The  Dakota  Indian  eats  the  liver  of  the  dog  in 
order  to  acquire  the  fleetness,  courage,  and  hunting 
sagacity  of  this  animal.  Cannibalism,  wherever  it  exists 
as  an  established  custom  or  tribal  institution,  and  not 
merely  as  a  temporary  refuge  from  stress  of  famine, 
originated  in  the  conception  of  the  possibility  of  trans- 
ferring the  spiritual  attributes  of  animals  and  persons 
to  those  who  consume  their  bodies  and  thus  make  them 
a  part  of  themselves.  The  soul  is  not  squeamish  and 
migrates  readily  from  one  organism,  to  another  through 
the  stomach. 

A  vague  feeling  of  awe  and  mental  awkwardness  is 
awakened  by  the  thought  of  a  vagrant  disembodied 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  119 

spirit;  and  the  crude  and  crass  imagination  of  the 
savage,  not  knowing  what  else  to  do  with  it,  puts  it 
into  that  other  enigmatical  incarnation  of  life,  the 
beast.  This  is  the  lowest  and  grossest  form  of  metem- 
psychosis or  metasomatosis.  The  beast,  in  which  the 
human  soul  is  thus  re-embodied,  becomes  thereby  an 
object  of  peculiar  fear  and  reverence,  and  is  supposed 
to  be  endowed  with  a  certain  mystical  and  supernatural 
power  of  doing  good  or  evil,  aside  from  the  infliction 
of  physical  harm.  The  transmigration,  in  such  cases, 
was  not  regarded  as  a  punishment  or  degradation,  but 
rather  as  a  promotion  to  a  higher  plane  of  existence, 
a  sort  of  apotheosis  and  deification.  The  tendency  of 
the  primitive  man  was  to  look  upon  the  wild  beasts  of 
the  chase,  not  as  inferior,  but  as  superior  beings,  whose 
force  and  faculty  he  viewed  with  envy,  and  to  which 
he  paid  a  ceremonial  homage  even  in  the  act  of  kilHng 
them.  The  gods  of  rude  peoples  are,  for  the  most  part, 
zoomorphic,  revealing  themselves  in  brute  forms.  The 
natives  of  Africa  adore  the  elephant,  the  hyena,  and 
the  crocodile,  but  have  no  representati\  es  of  the  an- 
thropoid race,  such  as  apes  and  gorillas,  in  their  pan- 
theon; and  the  I^orth  American  aborigines  render 
divine  honours  to  the  owl,  the  beaver,  the  eagle,  the 
bear,  and  the  rattlesnake,  but  in  no  instance  are  their 
deities  anthropomorphic.  Survivals  of  this  belief  are 
found  in  the  religions  of  the  most  highly  civilized  peo- 
ples. Even  in  Christianity  the  third  person  of  the 
Trinity  is  symbolized  as  a  dove.  "When  a  European  ap- 
peared for  the  first  time  with  an  ass  among  the  Quaquas^ 
they  at  once  made  a  god  of  the  long-eared  and  loud- 
braying  brute,  watching  every  movement  as  ominous, 
and  interpreting  every  harsh  hee-haw  as  the  voice  of 


120  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

an  oracle.  The  ass  was  a  greater  mystery  to  tliem  than 
the  white  man,  and  they  obeyed  the  universal  law  which 
governs  the  expression  of  religious  feeling  by  prostrat- 
ing themselves  before  it.  The  first  impulse  of  the 
primitive  man  is  to  regard  any  strange  creature  as 
the  embodiment  of  an  evil  spirit,  a  demonic  incarnation, 
that  may  do  him  harm  if  not  properly  propitiated.  The 
same  feeling,  directed  toward  inanimate  objects,  gives 
rise  to  hylozoism  as  an  ontological  theory  and  to  fetich- 
ism  as  a  religious  cult. 

With  the  assignment  of  the  beast  to  its  proper 
place  in  the  order  of  evolution  and  the  recognition  of 
it  as  a  creature  lower  than  man  in  the  scale  of  being, 
but  having  a  genetic  connection  with  him,  the  doctrine 
of  the  transmigration  of  souls  acquired  a  deeper  pur- 
pose and  significance,  less  as  a  means  of  punishment 
arbitrarily  applied  than  as  a  process  of  spiritual 
growth  and  progressive  transformation.  According  to 
this  more  philosophical  modification  of  the  original 
theory,  every  living  creature  in  the  vast  and  compli- 
cated system  of  Nature  is  the  embodiment  of  certain 
passions  and  affections  suited  to  its  degree  of  develop- 
ment, and  every  individual  passes  at  death  into  the 
bodily  organism  of  the  animal  which  he  has  striven 
most  assiduously  and  persistently  to  imitate  while 
he  was  still  humanly  incarnated.  Swedenborg  states 
that  one  day,  after  having  eaten  more  heartily  than 
usual,  he  perceived  a  sort  of  vapour  issuing  from  the 
pores  of  his  skin  and  filling  the  room,  until  at  length 
it  began  to  descend  and  turned  into  hideous  reptiles 
as  soon  as  it  touched  the  floor.  The  apparition  of 
snakes  would  lead  one  naturally  to  infer  that  the  Swed- 
ish seer  had  partaken  too  freely  of  that  sweetly  delusive 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  121 

and  exceedingly  heady  beverage  known  as  Swedish 
punch.  But  whatever  may  have  been  the  immediate 
cause  of  this  startling  vision,  he  regarded  it  as  prophetic 
of  what  a  man  must  necessarily  come  to  by  indulging 
low  animal  appetites  and  thus  attaining  through  the 
rigorous  and  immutable  law  of  cause  and  effect  the 
goal  of  his  conscious  or  unconscious  aspirations. 

Metempsychosis  is  only  applied  metaphor,  or  meta- 
phor literally  interpreted  and  practically  insisted  upon, 
as  when  we  speak  of  a  gluttonous,  rapacious,  tricky, 
cruel,  or  generally  offensive  person  as  a  hog,  a  vulture, 
a  fox,  a  tiger,  or  a  skunk.  Death  merely  releases  the 
soul  from  corporeal  restraints  and  enables  it  to  seek 
a  habitation  better  suited  to  the  gratification  of  its 
cherished  desires,  in  obedience  to  the  law  of  spiritual 
affinity  and  attraction.  Thus  Nature  is  constantly  en- 
deavouring to  rectify  incongruities  and  to  produce  per- 
fect harmony  in  all  her  works.  The  soul  is  everywhere 
the  plastic  and  creative  principle,  w^hich  moulds  the 
physical  elements  to  its  own  ideal,  as  the  poet  Spenser 
says: 

For  of  the  soul  the  body  form  doth  take, 
For  soul  is  form  and  doth  the  body  make. 

Plato  tells  us  that  the  pure  soul,  when  it  is  set  free 
from  the  body,  is  drawn  to  what  is  pure,  and  the  base 
soul  to  what  is  base,' like  seeking  like.  Thus  each  in- 
dividual predetermines  in  the  formation  of  his  char- 
acter his  fate  and  future  associations,  working  out  his 
own  salvation  in  a  profounder  and  more  philosophical 
sense  than  is  commonly  attached  to  these  words  in  mod- 
ern pulpit  phraseology. 

In  the  Institutes  of  Manu  and  Yajiiavalkya,  fate 
(daivam)  and  human  effort  {purusJikdra)  are  harmo- 


122  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

nized  by  resolving  the  former  into  the  latter  on  the  theo- 
ry of  the  pre-existence  of  the  soul,  fate  being  only  the 
natural  sequence  of  past  actions  or  of  *'  deeds  done  in 
a  former  body/'  "  The  accomplishment  of  an  act/' 
says  the  Indian  lawgiver,  "  depends  upon  fate  and 
human  exertion;  but  what  is  here  called  fate  is  mani- 
festly the  resultant  of  acts  performed  in  a  previous 
stage  of  existence.  Some  expect  success  from  fate  or 
from  the  inherent  nature  of  the  thing,  from  time  or 
from  human  agency;  others,  of  superior  perception, 
seek  it  in  the  union  of  all  these  factors.  For  as  with  a 
single  wheel  there  can  be  no  progress  of  a  chariot,  so 
fate  without  human  effort  can  not  be  carried  into  ef- 
fect.''    (Yajnavalkyadharma-Sastra,  i,  348-350.) 

According  to  this  theory,  the  element  of  fore-ordi- 
nation, so  far  as  it  enters  into  a  man's  character  and 
controls  his  conduct,  does  not  result  from  the  arbitrary 
decree  of  a  higher  power,  but  is  the  natural  and  neces- 
sary outcome  of  a  universal  law,  and  springs  directly 
from  the  operations  of  his  own  will,  which  is  the 
source  of  aJl  the  forces  that  predetermine  his  career 
and  shape  his  destiny.  Modern  science  also  tends  more 
and  more  to  confirm  this  view.  To  what  fearful  ex- 
tent man  is  the  helpless  creature  and  melancholy 
victim  of  prenatal  influences  and  external  circum- 
stances, and  how  largely  his  nature  is  subdued  to  his 
moral  and  physical  environment  is  evident  from  the 
startling  light  which  statistics  has  thrown  upon  the 
operation  of  his  so-called  free  will  and  power  of  self- 
determination  in  relation  to  suicides,  murders,  acci- 
dental deaths,  marriages,  and  other  social  phenomena. 
Whether  or  not  the  world  be  the  play  and  jugglery  of 
the  Absolute,  and 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  123 

.  .   .  the  great  globe  itself, 
Yea,  all  which  it  inherit. 

be  in  reality  only  the  "  unsubstantial  pageant,"  to  which 
Prospero  compares  it,  and  man  the  helpless  toy  of 
destiny,  it  is  certain  that  our  criminal  codes  show  a 
constantly  increasing  tendency  to  admit  the  extenuat- 
ing force  of  circumstances  in  judging  of  human  actions, 
and  our  schemes  of  philanthropy  and  reform,  discard- 
ing in  a  great  measure  the  old  machinery  of  moral 
appeal  and  hortatory  homily,  are  directed  more  and  more 
to  the  counteraction  of  hereditary  propensities  and  the 
improvement  of  the  external  conditions  of  human  life 
as  the  most  efficient  means  of  eradicating  vice,  dimin- 
ishing crime,  and  elevating  mankind. 

Plato  also  maintains,  or  at  least  suggests,  that  the 
puzzling  problem  of  the  origin  of  a  priori  notions,  in- 
nate ideas,  intuitions,  axioms,  necessary  postulates,  and 
universal  affirmations  of  the  reason,  may  be  most  easily 
and  satisfactorily  solved  by  regarding  them  as  survivals 
of  knowledge  acquired  in  a  previous  state  of  existence, 
the  winnowed  and  garnered  fruits  of  preiatal  experi- 
ence. These  inherent  truths  and  intuitional  percep- 
tions thus  constitute  the  sum  of  man's  permanent  and 
imprescriptible  intellectual  acquisitions  prior  to  the 
present  period  of  his  incarnation,  and  represent,  so  to 
speak,  the  consolidated  spintual  capital,  which  survives 
the  dissolution  of  the  body  and  with  which  he  begins 
another  and  higher  stage  of  embodiment.  "  The 
mind,"  says  Spinoza,  '^  can  not  be  absolutely  destroyed 
with  the  body,  but  somewhat  of  it  remains  which  is 
eternal.  .  .  .  There  are  rare  minds,  of  which  the  prin- 
cipal part  is  eternal;  so  that  they  have  scarce  any- 
thing to  fear  from  death." 
9 


124  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

Lessing  held  that  the  possession  of  five  senses  is 
only  peculiar  to  our  present  temporary  state  of  being,  and 
that  in  the  past  we  may  have  had  less  and  in  the  future 
may  become  endowed  with  more  than  five  senses.  Even 
now  we  know  of  persons  who  go  in  and  out  among  us, 
eating,  drinking,  merry-making,  and  marrying  like  ordi- 
nary mortals,  yet  who  claim  to  have  won  for  themselves 
the  faculty  of  conceiving  and  perceiving  four  dimen- 
sions. Is  this  a  prophecy  of  what  is  in  store  for  us  all, 
the  isolated  and  individual  foreshadowings  of  a  future 
four-dimensioned  existence  for  the  race?  The  old 
mystic  Henry  More  recognised  the  existence  of  a  fourth 
dimension  which  he  called  essential  spissitude  (spis- 
situdo  essentice),  and  regarded  it  as  an  attribute  of 
spirits:  Uiicunque  vel  plures  vel  plus  essentice  in  aliquo 
ubi  continetur,  quam  quod  amplitudinem  hujus  adce- 
quat,  ubi  agnoscitur  quarta  hoec  dimensio  quam  appello 
spissitudinem  essentialem.  (Enchiridion  Metaphysicum, 
pars  i,  cap.  28,  §  7.) 

Lessing's  theory  as  set  forth  in  his  dissertation  on  the 
possibility  of  man's  having  more  than  five  senses  (Dass 
mehr  als  fiinf  Sinne  fiir  den  Menschen  sein  konnen) 
is  based  upon  the  doctrine  of  evolution  or  the  gradual 
development  of  man  out  of  a  lower  and  less  perfect 
organism.  The  substance  of  his  a  priori  and  meta- 
physical argument  is  as  follows:  The  soul  is  endowed 
with  infinite  powers  of  apprehension  and  conception, 
which  it  attains,  not  at  once,  but  in  an  infinite  succes- 
sion of  time.  Nature  never  goes  by  leaps,  but  by  steps, 
which  are  often  so  small  and  slow  as  to  be  almost  im- 
perceptible; and  since  Nature  contains  many  substances 
and  forces  incognizable  by  any  of  the  senses,  which 
now  serve  the  soul  as  physical  organs  for  the  acquisition 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  125 

of  knowledge,  it  is  necessary  to  assume  that  there 
will  be  future  stages  of  existence  in  which  the  soul  will 
have  senses  capable  of  perceiving  all  the  substances  and 
forces  of  Nature.  With  our  present  number  of  senses 
we  are  unable  to  perceive  a  great  variety  of  objects 
which  are  either  too  small  for  us  or  too  large,  too  near, 
too  far,  or  too  subtile,  so  that  we  are  constantly  hemmed 
in  and  hindered  in  our  pursuit  of  knowledge  by  bodily 
limitations  and  imperfections,  and  thus  only  partially 
comprehend  the  real  relations  and  qualities  of  things. 
But  it  would  be  irrational  to  suppose  that  the  soul  is 
destined  to  grope  forever  in  fruitless  search  after  that 
which,  through  the  want  of  proper  or  sufficient  organs, 
it  is  incompetent  to  grasp.  "  This  system  of  mine,'' 
adds  Lessing,  "is  certainly  the  oldest  of  all  philosophical 
systems;  since  it  is,  in  fact,  no  other  than  the  system 
of  metempsychosis,  or  the  doctrine  of  the  pre-existence 
and  transmigration  of  the  soul,  which  was  not  only  a 
subject  of  speculation  with  Pythagoras  and  Plato,  but 
also  engaged  the  attention  of  Egyptians,  Chaldeans,  and 
Persians,  and,  indeed,  of  all  the  sages  of  the  East.  This 
circumstance  ought  to  produce  a  prepossession  in  its  fa- 
vour; for,  in  matters  of  pure  speculation,  the  first  and 
oldest  opinion  is  always  the  most  probable,  because  it  was 
at  once  suggested  by  common  sense."  It  is  also  interest- 
ing to  note  that  this  theory  of  the  possible  genesis  of  ad- 
ditional senses  through  the  striving  of  the  soul  after 
knowledge  corresponds,  in  a  remarkable  manner,  to  one 
of  the  chief  factors  in  the  modern  doctrine  of  evolution, 
as  expounded  and  emphasized  by  the  Neolamarckian 
school  of  scientists,  namely,  the  originary  influence  of 
mental  effort  in  producing  new  bodily  organs  and  facul- 
ties and  effecting  important  modification  of  species. 


126  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

Lessing  would  have  regarded  the  recent  discovery  of 
the  so-called  X-rays  by  Prof.  Rontgen  as  an  excellent 
illustration  and  quasi-confirmation  ot  his  views,  for  here 
we  have  to  do  with  vibrations  or  undulations  in  ether 
akin  to  light,  and  yet  wholly  imperceptible  to  the  human 
eye.  Owing  to  the  imperfection  of  our  senses  the  ex- 
istence of  these  occult  forces  in  Nature,  of  whose  mys- 
terious and  manifold  workings  we  are  just  beginning 
to  form  a  vague  and  extremely  limited  conception,  has 
hitherto  escaped  the  keenest  scientific  observation.  Even 
now  we  perceive  the  marvellous  and  almost  magical 
effects,  but  the  cause  is  hidden  from  our  sight. 

In  pantheism  there  is,  strictly  speaking,  no  place 
for  independent  finite  beings,  since  the  Infinite  is  every- 
thing. Even  the  postulated  all-god  of  this  system  of 
religion  is  not  a  personality  outside  of  the  universe, 
but  a  power  immanent  in  the  life  of  every  part  of  it 
and  subject  to  its  immutable  laws.  So  powerful  and 
pervasive  is  this  tendency  in  Eastern  thought,  that  not 
even  the  hard,  narrow,  and  anthropopathic  monotheism 
of  the  Arabian  prophet  has  been  able  to  resist  its  dis- 
integrating and  transforming  influence.  In  India,  the 
Yedanta,  with  its  indigenous  and  exuberant  growth  of 
ages  of  exegetical  and  metaphysical  speculation,  has 
completely  overrun  and  metamorphosed  the  gaunt  body 
of  alcoranic  divinity;  and  in  Persia  a  highly  mystical 
and  poetical  sofism  has  grown  up  in  the  very  bosom 
of  Mohammedanism. 

In  the  Orient,  the  two  chief  representatives  of 
pantheism  and  atheism,  as  organized  cults  sacerdotally 
and  ceremonially  equipped  and  clothed,  as  it  were,  in 
full  canonicals,  are  Brahmanism  and  Buddhism. 

There  is  another  class  of  Indian  atheists  who  are 


.      •  METEMPSYCHOSIS.  127 

called  Sunyavddinah  (i.  e.,  affirmers  of  emptiness  or 
nonexistence)  and  whose  doctrines  are  most  distinct- 
ly embodied  in  a  didactic  poem  entitled  S^nisar  (i.  e., 
Sunyasara,  the  essence  of  emptiness).  Unlike  the 
Buddhists,  instead  of  making  nothing  of  this  world 
they  make  everything  of  it.  They  despise  all  religious 
rites  and  are  thoroughly  materialistic  and  sensualistic 
in  their  ideas.  Their  generosity  springs  from  selfish- 
ness and  their  altruism  is  a  refined  and  far-sighted  ego- 
tism. Like  the  Sadducean  author  of  Ecclesiastes 
(iii,  19-22;  iv,  2-6),  they  believe  only  in  the  present 
life,  and  in  getting  the  greatest  possible  sum  of  pleas- 
ure out  of  it  before  they  "all  turn  to  dust  again." 
"  Take  and  enjoy  the  good  things  of  the  world,  and  give 
also  to  others  their  share,  since  thereby  your  own  en- 
joyment is  increased.  .  .  .  Men  die  and  pass  away  like 
leaves  on  the  trees;  new  ones  shoot  forth  as  the  old 
decay.  Fix  not  your  heart  upon  a  withered  leaf,  but 
seek  the  shade  of  the  green  foliage.  The  horse  that 
cost  a  thousand  rupees,  when  dead  is  worthless,  but 
the  live  nag  bears  you  on  your  way.  Trust  not  in  the 
dead,  but  in  the  living;  for  he  that  is  dead  will  never 
be  alive  again.  This  is  a  truth  which  all  men  know: 
of  all  ihose  that  have  died  not  one  has  come  back  again 
or  brought  tidings  of  the  rest.  .  .  .  The  living  care 
not  for  heaven  or  hell,  and  when  the  body  is  turned  to 
dust  what  distinction  is  there  between  an  ass  and  an 
ascetic?" 

Curiously  enough,  the  highest  good  or  supreme 
bliss,  which  is  the  aim  and  aspiration  of  the  mighty 
opposites,  Brahmanism  and  Buddhism,  is  the  same, 
namely,  final  and  eternal  exemption  from  the  pain- 
ful process  of  transmigration  through  the  extinction 


128  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

of  personal  existence:  the  Brahman  looking  forward 
with  cheerful  hope  to  absorption  in  the  universal  spirit, 
and  the  Buddhist  striving  by  suppressing  evil  passions 
and  by  seeking  the  "  path  of  the  law "  or  of  duty 
(dhammapadam)  to  render  himself  worthy  of  attain- 
ing individual  annihilation  and  of  passing  into  the  sin- 
less and  endless  tranquility  of  Nirvana. 

Egotism  is  the  essence  of  individuality,  and  in 
egotism  every  form  of  evil  has  its  root.  Neither  aus- 
terities, nor  ritual  observances,  nor  almsgiving,  nor 
good  works  of  any  kind  have  power  to  purge  human 
nature  of  this  universal  taint.  The  only  radical  cure 
of  self-love  and  self-assertion,  the  pride  and  naughti- 
ness of  the  heart,  is  the  utter  extinction  of  individual 
existence,  since  these  qualities  are  inherent  in  self- 
hood. The  Apostle  Paul  says,  "Though  I  bestow  all 
my  goods  to  feed  the  poor,  and  though  I  give  my  body 
to  be  burned,  and  have  not  charity,  it  profiteth  me 
nothing.^^  But  the  Sikh  prophet  Nanak  declares, 
"  Though  I  give  my  body  as  an  offering  to  the  fire,  or 
cause  it  to  be  sawn  asunder,  or  let  it  perish  in  the 
Himalaya,  yet  will  the  malady  still  cling  to  my  mind; 
and  though  I  bestow  in  charity  castles  of  gold  and  ex- 
cellent horses  and  elephants  and  land  and  much  ^jattle, 
yet  will  egotism  abide  within  me.''  That  "  respect  unto 
the  recompense  of  the  reward,"  which  Paul  praises 
in  the  conduct  of  Moses  as  one  of  the  fruits  of  faith, 
is  denounced  by  Nanak  as  a  product  of  egotism.  "  Spot- 
less," he  says,  "  is  the  religion  of  that  man  who  worketh 
and  looketh  not  to  the  future  reward." 

According  to  this  doctrine,  the  man  who  restrains 
his  passions  and  rejects  the  pleasures  of  sense,  leading 
a  holy,  virtuous,  and  beneficent  life,  with  no  hope  or 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  129 

desire  of  personal  remuneration  either  in  this  world 
or  in  the  world  to  come,  acts  from  higher  and  purer 
motives,  and  gives  freer  scope  to  the  development  of 
a  morality  untainted  by  selfishness,  than  he  who  con- 
soles himself  with  the  belief  that  his  self-denial  here 
will  be  compensated  for  by  a  thousandfold  greater  posi- 
tive happiness  hereafter,  the  light  affliction,  which  is 
but  for  a  moment,  working  for  him  a  far  more  exceed- 
ing and  eternal  weight  of  glory.  Here  surely  is  more 
room  for  a  system  of  moral  duties  than  in  a  religion 
that  offers  to  its  votaries  the  allurements  of  a  Christian 
heaven  or  a  Mohammedan  paradise  as  a  reward  for 
right  conduct.  The  Buddhist  believes  that  the  effects 
of  his  good  deeds  are  not  dissipated  by  his  death,  but 
that,  although  he  may  cease  to  exist  as  a  personal  entity, 
his  virtues  live  after  him,  entering  into  and  increasing 
the  moral  inheritance  of  the  race,  perfecting,  magnify- 
ing, and  glorifying  the  great  being — le  Grand  Stre — 
humanity,  easing  the  burdens  of  life  for  others,  and 
mitigating  the  common  misery  of  the  sentient  world 
long  after  his  own  individual  consciousness  has  found 
the  blissful  end  of  all  its  strivings  and  wanderings  in 
the  eternal  rest  and  peace  of  Nirvana.  "  Do  unto 
others  as  ye  would  that  others  should  do  unto  you^' 
is  the  golden  rule;  but  far  purer  and  more  precious 
than  gold  is  the  injunction  to  do  good  without  any 
reference  to  self,  and  to  cultivate  a  morality  that  does 
not  reflect  the  faintest  tint,  nor  involve  the  slightest 
implication  of  self-love. 

The  alleged  defect  in  the  pantheistic  scheme  of 
salvation  is  the  difficulty  of  harmonizing  the  decrees 
of  fate,  which  are  written  on  every  man^s  forehead,  with 
the  constant  appeals  which  are  made  to  him  as  a  free 


130  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

agent,  accountable  for  his  deeds.  But  what  system  of 
theology  has  ever  succeeded  in  reconciling  the  sharp 
antitheses  of  fore-ordination  and  predetermination  with 
personal  responsibility?  Surely  not  Milton's  Stygian 
group  of  metaphysicians,  who 

.  .  .  reasoned  high 
Of  Providence,  foreknowledge,  will,  and  fate, 
Fixed  fate,  free  will,  foreknowledge  absolute, 
And  found  no  end,  in  wandering  mazes  lost; 

nor  the  Greek  poets  and  philosophers,  with  their  notions 
of  the  influence  of  fxolpa  upon  the  destinies  of  gods 
and  men;  nor  Paul  with  his  theory  of  "  the  election  of 
grace  "  ;  nor  Augustine  and  Calvin  with  their  dogma 
of  the  arbitrary  predestination  of  men  to  eternal  hap- 
piness or  endless  woe,  a  dogma  which  even  the  stem 
Genevan  himself  admitted  to  be  a  dodrina  horribilis. 
Supralapsarian  and  Infralapsarian,  Pelagian  and  Semi- 
Pelagian,  the  objective  necessity  of  Thomas  Aquinas, 
and  the  subjective  necessity  of  Duns  Scotus,  after  all 
their  hair-splitting  and  logic-chopping,  come  no  nearer 
to  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the  puzzling  problem,  and 
appear  even  more  inconsistent  and  inconsequent  in 
their  reasonings  about  it  than  the  Hindu  pantheist, 
who  regards  all  finite  beings  as  mere  modes  and  mani- 
festations of  the  Supreme  Being,  just  as  waves  are  but 
fleeting  forms  of  water,  rising  out  of  and  remerging 
into  the  sea.  Indeed,  as  we  have  already  seen,  the  pan- 
theistic identification  of  fate  with  the  exercise  of  free 
will  in  a  former  state  of  existence  comes  nearer  to  a 
reconciliation  of  these  conflicting  forces  than  any  other 
system  of  metaphysics  or  scheme  of  theodicy. 

Again,  from  an  ethical  point  of  view,  the  inequalities 
of  human   conditions,   the   seemingly   capricious   dis- 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  131 

tribution  of  good  and  evil,  the  pleasures  enjoyed  and 
the  pains  endured  by  men  independently  of  any  obvious 
relation  to  their  respective  characters  or  acknowledged 
deserts,  can  be  best  explained  on  this  hypothesis,  which, 
unlike  the  current  orthodox  theodicy,  is  at  least  com- 
petent to 

.  .  .  assert  eternal  Providence, 
And  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  men, 

without  diabolizing  the  Divine  Being  and  utterly  sub- 
verting our  common  conceptions  of  justice.  It  is  surely 
more  moral,  as  well  as  more  intelligible,  to  suppose 
that  the  ills  we  suffer  in  this  world  are  due  to  our  own 
individual  antecedent  sins  and  shortcomings  than  that 
they  are  attributable  to  the  transgressions  of  one  far- 
off,  reputed  progenitor  and  federal  head,  for  whose 
conduct  no  subtilty  of  casuistry  can  make  us  feel  in 
the  slightest  degree  responsible,  or  that  our  eternal 
destiny  is  determined  by  the  arbitrary  decree  of  a 
being, 

Wha,  as  it  pleases  best  hissel', 
Sends  ane  to  heaven  and  ten  to  hell, 
A'  for  his  glory. 

The  proofs  of  personal  immortality  derived  from  the 
emotions  or  from  the  principle  of  compensation  and 
retribution  may  be  urged  with  equal  cogency  in  sup- 
port of  transmigration.  For  this  theory  puts  it  into 
the  power  of  every  human  being,  and  indeed  of  every 
living  creature,  to  determine  what  form  and  feature 
the  future  life  shall  assume.  Man  is  the  maker  of  his 
own  destiny  in  more  than  the  proverbial  sense  of  the 
phrase,  elevating  or  degrading  himself  in  the  scale  of 
sentient  existence  by  his  own  acts.    Each  new  incarna- 


132  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

tion  that  awaits  him,  like  the  maiden  of  heavenly 
beauty  or  hideous  aspect,  who  meets  the  soul  of  the 
Parsi  at  the  Chinvad  bridge,  is  the  personification  of 
his  own  thoughts,  words,  and  deeds.  He  grows  into 
the  complete  embodiment  of  the  propensities  which 
he  fosters,  and  fondly  cherished  tendencies  take  root 
in  him  as  instincts,  until  by  imperceptible  gradations 
his 

.  .  .  nature  is  subdued 
To  what  it  works  in,  like  the  dyer's  hand. 

The  recent  progress  of  the  physical  sciences  has 
also  lent  additional  interest  and  importance,  not  to 
say  probability,  to  the  ancient  doctrine.  Metempsy- 
chosis would  seem  to  be  the  spiritual  counterpart 
of  metamorphosis,  the  transmigration  of  souls  being 
logically  and  analogically  suggested  as  a  corollary  to 
the  transmutation  of  species.  The  one  does  not  neces- 
sarily involve  the  other,  but  both  lie  in  the  same  line 
of  thought.  There  is,  furthermore,  no  reason  why 
the  theory  of  the  conservation  and  persistence  of  force 
should  not  be  applicable  to  mental  or  psychical,  as  well 
as  to  mechanical  or  physical  forces.  No  impulse  ever 
ceases,  no  motion  is  ever  lost,  no  atom  can  be  disturbed 
without  disturbing  every  atom  in  the  universe.  If  a 
sparrow  fall  to  the  ground,  the  momentum  of  its  falling 
body  is  imparted  to  and  affects  every  particle  of  the 
globe.  But  what  becomes  of  the  vital  force  which 
animated  the  bird  and  impelled  it  through  the  air? 

It  is,  furthermore,  an  axiom  of  science  that  force 
is  an  essential  attribute  of  matter.  "Both,"  we  are 
told,  "are  mutable,  both  indestructible,  and  both,  so 
far  as  we  know,  quite  incapable  of  existing  alone." 
Mental  operations  are  dependent  upon  material  pro- 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  133 

cesses,  which  modern  physiologists  have  succeeded,  to 
some  extent  at  least,  in  tracing.  Of  the  one  apart  from 
the  other  we  have  no  experience,  and  therefore  no 
knowledge.  Force  isolated  from  matter  and  matter 
devoid  of  force  are  alike  inconceivable.  The  material- 
ist, then,  should  not,  and  in  fact  does  not,  deny  the 
existence,  but,  on  the  contrary,  emphatically  asserts 
the  eternity  of  spiritual  force:  he  denies  only  the  pos- 
sibility of  its  existence,  except  as  inhering  in  some 
material  form,  some  solid,  liquid,  gaseous,  visible  or 
invisible,  palpable  or  impalpable,  ponderable  or  im- 
ponderable body.  There  would  seem,  therefore,  to  be 
little  or  no  difference  between  the  mere  declaration  of 
the  immortality  of  the  soul  and  the  affirmation  of  the 
indestructibility  of  psychic  force.  The  only  question 
in  dispute  is  as  to  the  conditions  under  which  this 
sentient  principle,  this  thinking  and  conscious  energy, 
survives  and  continues  to  operate.  Does  spirit  remain 
forever  a  distinct  personal  entity,  disembodied  or  re- 
embodied,  or  is  it,  too,  convertible  into  other  forces, 
manifesting  itself  in  manifold  and  interchangeable 
forms,  like  light,  heat,  magnetism,  electricity,  motion, 
and  gravity?  Science  clearly  indicates  the  latter;  faith 
and  the  cravings  of  human  affections  cling  to  the 
former. 

But  whatever  may  be  ihe  nature  and  essence  of  the 
scintilla  animcB  divince,  and  whatever  transformations  it 
may  undergo,  we  have  never  known  it  and  can  not  con- 
ceive of  it,  except  in  connection  with  some  more  or  less 
highly  organized  collocation  of  material  atoms.  This 
is  true  of  both  "  celestial  bodies  and  bodies  terrestrial." 
The  apostle  can  not  describe  them  nor  the  imagination 
picture  them   otherwise   than   as  substance,   differing 


134  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

only  in  degrees  of  refinement  and  subtilty,  as  the  sun 
differs  from  the  moon  or  "  star  differs  from  star  in 
glory."  We  can  not,  even  in  thought,  disassociate  force 
from  something  forcible,  nor  imagine  wisdom  or  virtue 
as  existing  apart  from  the  wise  or  the  virtuous.  Not 
only  in  actuality,  but  also  in  ideation,  the  abstract  pre- 
sents itself  to  us  always  and  everywhere  as  the  con- 
crete. 

From  a  purely  speculative  standpoint,  therefore,  the 
assumption  that  soul  force  is  essentially  distinct  from 
all  other  forces,  never  being  converted  into  any  of  them, 
but  always  preserving  its  individuality  as  a  thinking 
entity,  and  the  scientific  axiom  that  all  force  is  inde- 
structible and  inseparable  from  matter,  would,  when 
taken  together  and  logically  formulated,  lead  inevitably 
to  the  doctrine  of  metempsychosis.  The  beast  soul  has 
been  characterized  by  Thomas  Aquinas  as  substantia 
incompleta  ratione  subsistentice  et  naturoi,  i.  e.,  an  entity 
which  exists  only  as  aided  and  supplemented  by  matter; 
but  it  is  a  question  whether  this  dependence  upon  mat- 
ter does  not  hold  true  of  all  souls. 

We  have  no  knowledge  or  experience  of  any  force 
as  an  entity,  but  only  as  a  phenomenon.  We  recognise 
it  solely  in  some  physical  manifestation.  What  we  call 
metaphorically  the  flame  of  life,  the  vital  spark,  may 
be  the  result  of  a  combustion  of  gases,  like  any  other 
flame,  and  when  this  chemical  action  ceases  the  flame 
goes  out.  The  flame  has,  in  fact,  no  real,  but  only  a 
phenomenal  existence;  it  is  the  visible  effect  of  a  pro- 
cess. Death  is  brought  about  by  the  operation  of  the 
same  forces  that  produce  and  sustain  life.  There  is 
nothing  that  leaves  a  person's  body  at  death  that  has 
not  been  leaving  it  ever  since  his  birth;   only  the  loss. 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  135 

so  to  speak,  is  greater  than  the  supply.  The  change 
is  one  which  has  always  been  going  on,  but  in  different 
degrees  and  relations.  The  debit  begins  to  exceed  the 
credit  in  the  ledger  of  life;  the  balance  keeps  on  fatally 
accumulating  on  the  wrong  page;  the  organism  be- 
comes painfully  conscious  of  a  deficit,  until  all  further 
transactions  are  impossible,  vital  processes  cease,  and 
bankruptcy  is  inevitable. 

It  is  not  our  present  purpose  to  discuss  the  theory 
of  the  transmigration  of  souls  as  a  tenet  of  philosophy, 
but  merely  to  call  attention  to  its  beneficent  influence 
as  a  code  of  morals  and  especially  to  its  effect  upon 
the  relation  of  man  to  the  lower  animals  and  his  kind 
and  considerate  treatment  of  them.  The  recognition 
of  an  original  affinity  between  man  and  beast,  how- 
ever remote  the  kinship  may  be,  or  whether  it  be  based 
upon  the  ancient  dogma  of  metempsychosis  or  the  mod- 
ern doctrine  of  evolution,  necessarily  creates  a  current 
of  sympathy  extending  even  to  the  most  insignificant 
members  of  the  great  and  widely  diversified  family  of 
sentient  beings,  and  rendering  it  impossi  ole  willfully 
to  neglect  or  maltreat  the  "  poor  relations,"  to  whom 
we  are  united  by  the  warm  and  living  ties  of  blood. 

In  a  few  bold  lines  already  quoted  and  written  half  a 
century  ago  Emerson  anticipates  the  most  radical  deduc- 
tions from  Darwinism  in  his  poetic  conception  of  how, 

.  .  .  striving  to  be  man,  the  worm 
Mounts  through  all  the  spires  of  form. 

A  clear  perception  and  abiding  consciousness  of  this 
truth  would  cause  even  the  most  heedless  wayfarer 
to  take  heed  to  his  feet  and  step  aside,  rather  than  tread 
upon  the  humble  embodiment  of  such  lofty  aspirations. 


136  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

It  would  be  unreasonable  to  suppose  that  no  cruelty 
to  animals  occurs  in  Oriental  countries,  where  metemp- 
sychosis is  the  prevailing  speculative  opinion.  The 
observations  of  Ernst  Hackel  (Indische  Reisebriefe),  W. 
Heine  (Eine  Weltreise),  Graul  (Reise  nach  Ostindien), 
and  J.  Lockwood  Kipling  (Man  and  Beast  in  India)  suf- 
fice to  dissipate  any  illusion  of  this  kind.  Unfortunate- 
ly the  conduct  of  men  is  not  always  consistent  with  the 
religious  precepts  and  philosophical  principles  by  which 
they  profess  to  be  governed,  and  the  strictest  injunc- 
tions to  kindness  and  compassion  are  often  of  little 
avail  in  resisting  the  primitive  instincts  and  impulses 
of  brutality  inherent  in  human  nature.  The  absolute 
prohibition  of  the  destruction  of  animals,  prescribed 
by  Buddhism  and  Jainaism,  is  especially  absurd  in  India, 
where  savage  beasts  and  venomous  reptiles  abound 
and  put  the  inhabitants  in  daily  peril  of  their  lives.  Far 
more  sensible  in  theory,  as  well  as  more  salutary  in 
practice,  is  the  discrimination  of  the  Parsi  between 
useful  animals,  creations  of  the  beneficent  spirit,  which 
are  to  be  carefully  cherished,  and  noxious  animals,  cre- 
ations of  the  hurtful  spirit,  which  are  to  be  conscien- 
tiously exterminated.  The  religious  duty  of  preserva- 
tion or  destruction  is  in  each  case  equally  imperative. 

But,  notwithstanding  its  marked  deficiencies  and 
manifold  disadvantages,  the  doctrine  in  question  has 
undoubtedly  produced  in  the  East  a  tenderer  regard  for 
the  rights  of  domestic  and  wild  animals  than  is  gen- 
erally prevalent  in  the  West,  where,  until  quite  recently, 
only  such  beasts  and  birds  as  were  the  property  of  man 
were  thought  to  be  entitled  to  any  human  sympathy 
or  legal  protection  whatever.  Cruelty  was  prohibited 
and  punished  solely  as  an  infringement  of  the  rights 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  137 

of  the  owner,  for  which  the  imposition  of  a  fine  would 
fully  compensate  him,  but  no  consideration  was  given 
to  the  sufferings  of  the  animal  itself,  which  was  re- 
garded merely  as  an  animated  and  automatic  machine. 
It  is  also  a  significant  circumstance  that  the  earhest 
European  advocates  of  animals'  rights  based  their  argu- 
ments and  appeals  upon  panpsychism,  or  the  essential 
unity  of  all  forms  of  sentient  existence,  and  upon  the 
assumption  that  beasts  are,  like  men,  emanations  from 
the  infinite  source  of  being  and  parts  of  the  general 
soul  of  the  universe.  This  is  true  of  the  Ionic  school, 
the  oldest  group  of  Greek  philosophers,  of  whom  An- 
aximander  anticipated  the  latest  inferences  from  the 
doctrine  of  evolution  concerning  the  descent  of  man, 
of  Pythagoras,  Empedocles,  Theophrastus,  the  Stoics, 
Plotinus  and  Porphyry,  and  the  Neoplatonists  and 
Neopythagoreans  in  general.  In  modern  times  the 
same  theory  has  been  held  by  Hamann,  Herder,  Schleier- 
macher,  Krause,  Schopenhauer,  Eduard  von  Hartmann, 
Lotze,  Wundt,  Paulsen,  the  materialists  Ludwig  Feuer- 
bach,  Moleschott,  and  Biichner,  not  to  montion  many 
less  noted  writers,  and,  so  far  as  it  affects  the  ethical 
relations  of  man  to  the  lower  animals,  is  elucidated 
and  confirmed  by  the  newest  developments  of  biology 
and  zoology,  which  began  with  the  publication  of  Dar- 
win's Origin  of  Species.  With  the  disappearance  of  the 
crude  hypothesis  of  special  creations  from  the  domain 
of  natural  history,  the  anthropocentric  conception  of 
the  universe  has  ceased  to  be  tenable  and  has  been  aban- 
doned by  the  majority  of  scholars  in  every  field  of 
investigation,  including  even  the  best  thinkers  in  the 
province  of  theology.  The  influence  of  this  change 
of  view  in  enlarging  the  scope  of  ethical  inquiry  so  as 


138  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

to  bring  not  only  the  lower  races  of  mankind,  but  also 
the  lower  animals  within  its  range,  is  especially  observ- 
able, and  has  been  most  fruitful  of  happy  results  by 
awakening  feelings  of  compassion  and  a  sense  of  jus- 
tice in  individual  minds  and  giving  expression  to  them 
/,  in  municipal  and  national  legislation. 

A  striking  manifestation  of  this  newly  awakened 
sympathy  is  the  organization  and  legal  recognition  of 
societies  for  the  prevention  of  cruelty  to  animals.  These 
benign  and  strictly  secular  institutions  are  of  compara- 
tively recent  origin,  and  furnish,  by  the  sad  necessity  of 
their  existence,  a  confession  and  confirmation  of  a 
radical  deficiency  in  Christian  teaching,  which  they  en- 
deavour to  supply.  Such  associations  would  be  su- 
perfluous in  Brahmanical  or  Buddhistic  lands,  where 
men  are  taught  from  their  infancy  to  hold  all  life  in- 
violably sacred,  and  kind  and  sympathetic  treatment 
of  the  lower  animals  constitutes  an  essential  element 
of  religion  and  religious  education.  It  is  true  that  in 
every  country  and  every  community  there  are  persons 
who  are  wholly  unamenable  to  such  instruction  or  to 
any  sort  of  moral  suasion,  and  on  whom  ethical  teach- 
ing can  be  inculcated  only  by  judicial  punishment.  In 
the  conduct  of  life  their  sole  criterion  is  the  criminal 
code;  whatever  it  prohibits  and  punishes  they  regard 
as  wrong,  and  whatever  it  permits  they  assume  to  be 
right.  The  perfect  man  is,  in  their  eyes,  one  who  has 
never  been  guilty  of  a  misdemeanour,  for  which  he 
could  be  fined  or  sent  to  prison.  Upon  this  class  of 
individuals,  which  is  much  larger  than  it  is  generally 
supposed  to  be,  penal  legislation  exerts  an  educational 
influence,  serving  as  a  permanent  preventive  of  crime 
by  elevating  the  average  standard  of  public  morality 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  139 

rather  than  as  a  temporary  deterrent  by  appealing  to 
the  principle  of  fear.  Thus  lawgivers  and  courts  of 
justice  exercise  correctional  functions  in  a  moral  and 
didactic  as  well  as  in  a  purely  punitive  sense  of  the 
term;  and  it  is  especially  in  the  extension  of  the  sphere 
of  criminal  jurisprudence  to  the  protection  of  animals 
against  the  capricious  cruelty  of  man  that  its  ethical 
value,  as  a  means  of  moulding  popular  sentiment  and 
moralizing  public  opinion,  has  been  most  perceptible. 

In  India  hospitals  for  diseased  and  decrepit  beasts 
have  existed  from  time  immemorial,  and  still  consti- 
tute a  universally  recognised  object  of  public  charity 
and  private  munificence.  Thus  we  find  established 
in  Bombay  a  flourishing  institution  of  this  kind,  known 
as  Panjara  Pol,  founded  and  supported  by  wealthy  Jaina 
merchants  and  other  Hindu  sects,  especially  the  votaries 
of  Vishnu.  It  is  richly  endowed  and  situated  in  a 
street  outside  of  the  fort  and  covers  several  acres  of 
ground.  Prof.  Monier  Williams,  who  visited  it,  says: 
"^  The  animals  are  well  fed  and  well  tended,  though  it 
certainly  seemed  to  me  that  the  great  mLJority  would 
be  more  mercifully  provided  for  by  the  application 
of  a  loaded  pistol  to  their  heads."  This  remark  is 
doubtless  correct,  and  would  apply  with  equal  force  and 
pertinency  to  many  suffering  and  incurably  diseased 
persons.  Savage  tribes  are  vont  to  give  expression  to 
their  compassionate  feelings  in  this  summary  and  ef- 
fective manner.  To  the  Greeks  and  other  nations  of 
antiquity  it  seemed  as  absurd  to  prolong  the  life  of  a 
decrepit  man  as  it  does  to  Prof.  Williams  to  prolong 
the  life  of  a  decrepit  beast.  But  a  sense  of  the  sacred- 
ness  of  human  life  prevents  Englishmen  of  to-day  from 
showing  kindness  to  the  aged  and  infirm  by  killing 
10 


140  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

them,  and  a  still  stronger  feeling  of  the  same  kind  pre- 
vents Jainas  from  treating  old  and  sickly  animals  in 
the  same  way.  The  difference  consists  merely  in  a 
narrower  or  broader  application  of  the  Ahinsd  com- 
mandment: Thou  shalt  not  kill.  "  A  large  proportion 
of  space/'  continues  our  informant,  "  was  allotted  to 
stalls  for  sick  and  infirm  oxen,  some  with  bandaged 
eyes,  some  with  crippled  legs,  some  wrapped  up  in 
blankets  and  lying  on  straw  beds.  One  huge,  bloated, 
broken-down  old  bull  in  the  last  stage  of  decrepitude 
and  disease  was  a  pitiable  object  to  behold.  Then  I 
noticed  in  other  parts  of  the  building  singular  speci- 
mens of  emaciated  buffaloes,  limping  horses,  mangy  dogs, 
apoplectic  pigs,  paralytic  donkeys,  featherless  vultures, 
melancholy  monkeys,  comatose  tortoises,  besides  a 
strange  medley  of  cats,  rats,  and  mice,  small  birds,  rep- 
tiles, and  even  insects,  in  every  stage  of  suffering  and 
disease.  In  one  corner  a  crane,  with  a  kind  of  wooden 
leg,  appeared  to  have  spirit  enough  left  to  strut  in  a 
stately  manner  among  a  number  of  dolorous-looking 
ducks  and  depressed  fowls.  The  most  spiteful  animals 
seemed  to  be  tamed  by  their  sufferings  and  the  care 
they  received.  All  were  being  tended,  nursed,  phys- 
icked, and  fed,  as  if  it  were  a  sacred  duty  to  prolong 
the  existence  of  every  living  creature  to  the  utmost 
possible  extent.  It  is  even  said  that  men  are  paid  to 
sleep  on  dirty  woollen  beds  in  different  parts  of  the 
building,  that  the  loathsome  vermin  with  which  they 
are  infested  may  be  supplied  with  their  nightly  meal 
of  human  blood."  This  last  statement  is  doubtless 
the  invention  of  some  itinerant  wag  hailing  from  the 
home  of  Douglas  Jerrold  or  the  land  of  Mark  Twain, 
although  it  must  be  confessed  that  the  Oriental  has  the 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  141 

courage  of  his  opinions  very  strongly  developed  and 
seldom  shrinks  from  the  logical  application  of  his  prin- 
ciples, no  matter  to  what  extremities  they  may  reduce 
him.  The  first  of  the  five  commandments,  which  con- 
stitute the  moral  code  of  the  Jainas  and  correspond 
almost  exactly  to  the  pdnchasila  of  the  Buddhists,  in- 
culcates a  tender  regard  for  all  forms  of  life.  That 
this  nohle  feeling  should  be  carried  to  ridiculous  excess 
and  impose  a  number  of  absurd  prescriptions,  such  as 
to  strain  water  before  drinking  it,  never  to  eat  or  drink 
anything  in  the  dark,  lest  an  insect  might  be  inad- 
vertently swallowed,  to  sweep  the  ground  with  a  soft 
brush  before  sitting  down  lest  an  insect  might  be 
crushed,  not  to  walk  in  the  wind  without  wearing  a 
piece  of  muslin  over  the  mouth  lest  an  insect  might  be 
blown  into  it,  not  to  leave  a  liquid  uncovered  lest  an 
insect  might  be  drowned — these  and  many  other  equally 
preposterous  precautions  may  travesty  but  can  not  de- 
stroy the  beauty  and  worth  of  the  fundamental  idea. 
One  can  imagine  the  depths  of  horror  ani  despair  to 
which  a  conscientious  Jaina  would  be  consigned  by  a 
microscopic  examination  of  his  daily  food  and  drink. 

The  feelings  with  which  a  visit  to  the  Panjara  Pol 
inspired  the  Oxford  professor  do  not  differ  essentially 
from  those  whijch  would  be  excited  in  any  refined  and 
sensitive  mind  by  a  walk  through  the  wards  of  an 
ordinary  hospital.  We  have  already  left  far  behind 
us  the  primitive  barbarism,  which  would  have  laughed 
at  our  anxiety  to  promote  the  comfort  and  to  preserve 
the  lives  of  old  and  useless  persons  as  foolish  senti- 
mentalism.  Perhaps,  when  we  have  fully  outgrown 
our  anthropocentric  ideas  and  traditions,  we  may  also 
discover  in  a  hospital  for  old  and  worn-out  animals 


14:2  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

something  really  commendable  and  not  utterly  and 
irredeemably  comical. 

The  Italian  physiologist  Prof.  Mantegazza,  in  the 
record  of  his  travels  in  India,  describes  a  similar  estab- 
lishment, and  seems  to  have  been  greatly  disgusted 
with  what  he  witnessed.  One  could  hardly  expect  that 
such  tender  regard  for  subhuman  infirmities  would  ex- 
cite any  other  than  loathsome  feelings  in  the  mind  of 
the  man  who  invented  a  new  kind  of  rack,  called  the 
"  tormentor,"  for  the  express  purpose  of  inflicting  upon 
animals  the  most  excruciating  pain  of  which  he  could 
possibly  conceive.  Day  after  day  and  month  after 
month  he  contemplated,  as  he  confesses,  "  with  much 
delight  and  extreme  patience "  (con  molto  amore  et 
pazienza  moltissima),  the  sufferings  of  dogs  and  other 
exceedingly  sensitive  creatures  stretched  upon  his  horrid 
engine  and  enduring  prolonged  agonies,  which,  if  we 
may  judge  from  the  meagre  scientific  results  in  his 
publications,  served  no  purpose  whatever  except  the 
gratification  of  a  morbid  and  insensate  curiosity. 

On  the  5th  of  March,  1890,  there  died  in  Bombay, 
at  an  advanced  age,  a  Parsi  woman,  named  Lady  Sa- 
karbai,  whose  husband  had  appropriated  five  years  before 
a  considerable  sum  of  money  to  found  a  hospital  for  ani- 
mals, which  he  called  "  Bai  Sakarbai "  in  honour  of  his 
wife,  and  which  was  to  remain  a  monument  to  her  mem- 
ory. During  the  rest  of  her  life  the  now  deceased  lady 
took  a  lively  interest  in  this  philozoic  foundation  and 
left  it  in  a  flourishing  condition. 

Institutions  of  the  kind  just  described  are  both 
charitable  and  educational.  The  compassion  manifested 
in  such  cases  not  only  alleviates  the  actual  suffering  of 
the  beast,  but  it  also  exerts  a  wholesome  reflex  influ- 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  143 

ence  upon  man,  ennobling  and  humanizing  his  charac- 
ter, cultivating  his  affections  and  sympathies  for  the 
lower  animals,  and  teaching  children  especially  not 
to  indulge  in  thoughtless  cruelty  toward  any  sentient 
creature. 

When  King  Thibo,  of  Siam,  sold  a  white  elephant  to 
Mr.  Barnum,  he  stipulated  in  the  contract  or  bill  of  sale 
that  "  the  rich  man  who  has  bought  the  elephant  agrees 
to  love  and  cherish  it,  to  make  its  life  pleasant,  and  to 
keep  it  safe  from  all  pain  or  injury."  Tender  consid- 
eration of  this  sort  is  a  sentiment  quite  foreign  to 
Christian  civilization,  and  would  be  sneered  at  by  the 
European,  who  does  not  scruple  to  send  his  broken- 
down  horses  to  the  knacker  to  be  cut  up  into  dog's  meat, 
or  to  sell  them  for  a  song  to  a  low  and  brutal  carter 
to  be  driven  and  beaten  to  death  in  their  old  age. 

Notwithstanding  the  ridicule  which  Prof.  Williams 
heaps  upon  the  Panjara  Pol  of  Bombay,  it  has  been 
deemed  necessary  to  found  a  similar  Animals'  In- 
stitute in  London,  for  the  purpose  of  lelieving  the 
sufferings  of  sick  or  wounded  animals  by  proper  medi- 
cal or  surgical  treatment.  How  urgent  was  the  need 
of  such  an  institution  is  evident  from  the  fact  that 
soon  after  it  was  opened  for  the  reception  of  patients, 
the  hospital  was  found  insufficient  to  accommodate 
all  the  horses,  dogs,  cats,  and  other  animals  for  which 
admission  was  sought.  It  was  also  thought  advisable 
to  establish,  as  supplementary  to  the  hospital,  a  sani- 
tarium in  the  suburbs  of  the  city  for  convalescents 
and  for  cases  requiring  prolonged  treatment,  careful 
dietary,  and  rest.  Although  the  animals  of  the  poorer 
classes,  as  well  as  waifs  and  estrays,  are  treated  gratuit- 
ously, the  number  of  paying  patients  promises  to  make 


14:4  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

the  institution  self-supporting  after  the  preliminary 
expenses  have  been  covered. 

Very  different  from  this  retreat  for  unfortunate 
animals  is  the  veterinary  hospital  recently  established 
in  New  York  under  the  charge  of  four  surgeons,  the 
chief  of  whom  also  drives  out  to  visit  his  patients  in 
their  homes  like  an  ordinary  medical  practitioner.  The 
principal  patrons  of  this  institution  are  wealthy  ladies, 
whose  pampered  pugs,  high-bred  cats,  and  other  pets 
suffer  from  indigestion  caused  by  too  rich  and  abundant 
food.  Horses  are  frequently  operated  upon,  but  the 
cost  of  treatment  is  so  great  that  it  does  not  pay  unless 
the  animal  has  a  value  of  several  hundred  dollars.  From 
a  general  philozoic  point  of  view  this  establishment 
has  no  practical  value  whatever,  since  it  affords  no  relief 
to  the  thousands  of  maimed  and  sick  creatures  who 
stand  in  most  pressing  need  of  it. 

In  some  of  the  other  larger  European  cities  we  also 
find  occasional  asylums  for  stray  and  famished  dogs  and 
homes  for  houseless  cats,  such  as  the  refuge  founded 
by  Ellen  M.  Gifford  at  Brighton,  in  England,  for  the 
succour  and  sustenance  of  needy  animals.  Miss  Lindo's 
hospital  for  consumptive  and  home  for  weary  horses 
near  London,  and  the  Countess  De  la  Torres's  asylum 
for  cats  at  Hammersmith.  The  pound,  which  exists 
in  most  towns,  or  the  parish  pinfold,  is  an  establish- 
ment of  a  wholly  different  nature,  inasmuch  as  its  pur- 
pose is  not  to  provide  a  refuge  for  beast,  but  to  give 
protection  to  man,  corresponding,  in  this  respect,  not 
so  much  to  a  hospital  or  almshouse  as  to  what  the  bed- 
lam or  the  madhouse  used  to  be  before  the  discovery 
of  more  rational  and  scientific  methods  of  treating  the 
insane. 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  1 45 

"In  Egypt/'  says  Lecky,  "there  are  hospitals  for 
superannuated  cats,  and  the  most  loathsome  insects  are 
regarded  with  tenderness;  but  human  life  is  treated 
as  if  it  were  of  no  account,  and  human  suffering  scarcely 
elicits  a  care.  The  same  contrast  appears  more  or  less 
in  all  Eastern  nations."  Also  some  of  the  men  most 
conspicuous  for  their  activity  during  the  Keign  of  Ter- 
ror in  France  were  very  fond  of  pet  animals.  Couthon 
was  strongly  attached  to  a  spaniel;  Fournier  lavished 
his  love  on  a  squirrel;  Panis  kept  two  gold  pheasants; 
Chaumette  had  an  aviary;  and  the  sanguinary  Marat 
w^as  devoted  to  doves.  The  psychological  problem  pre- 
sented in  all  these  cases  is4o  reconcile  so  much  kindness 
to  the  lower  animals  with  so  great  indifference  or  such 
excessive  cruelty  to  human  beings."  It  would  be  a  mis- 
take to  suppose  that  the  terrorists  of  the  French  Eevo- 
lution  did  not  love  their  fellow-men.  On  the  contrary, 
so  all-absorbing  was  their  enthusiasm  for  humanity  and 
so  intense  their  affection  for  the  race,  that,  as  is  often 
the  case  with  philanthropists,  they  lost  ?ight  of  the 
rights  and  were  deaf  to  the  woes  of  individuals.  All 
other  consideration  were  swallowed  up  in  fanatical  devo- 
tion to  certain  fixed  ideas.  We  have  an  example  of  this 
perversion  of  feeling  in  readers  of  fiction,  who  waste 
their  emotions  in  weeping  over  the  trials  and  afflictions 
of  imaginary  personages  and  turn  away  with  dry  eyes 
and  cold  hearts  from  the  misery  of  men  and  women 
in  real  life.  The  Oriental,  whose  extreme  carefulness 
of  beasts  renders  him  careless  of  mankind,  illustrates 
the  same  emotional  limitations  of  human  nature  nar- 
rowed and  intensified  by  religious  superstition.  This 
principle  is  exemplified  on  a  smaller  scale  by  the  Ger- 
man lady  who  advertised  in  a  Berlin  paper  for  "  well- 


146  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

mannered  and  well-dressed  children  to  be  employed 
for  several  hours  each  day  to  amuse  a  sickly  cat "  ;  and 
by  the  American  lady  who  ordered  a  rosewood  coffin 
lined  with  satin  and  inlaid  with  silver  for  the  obsequies 
of  a  deceased  lapdog.  Peoples,  as  well  as  persons,  may 
have  their  sympathies  warped  and  drawn  awry  and  thus 
develop  into  "  cranks." 

As  a  rule,  in  Occidental  countries  the  first  and  pre- 
vailing impulse  of  the  police  authorities,  as  well  as  of  the 
public  in  general,  is  to  knock  all  stray  and  helpless 
animals  on  the  head,  and  in  most  cases  this  summary 
method  of  proceeding  is  adopted.  Mrs.  Jameson  gives 
the  following  account  of  what  she  once  saw  in  Vienna 
at  a  time  when  there  was  a  great  dread  of  hydrophobia, 
and  orders  were  issued  to  massacre  all  unclaimed  or 
unmuzzled  dogs  found  within  the  precincts  or  in  the 
suburbs  of  the  city.  The  men  employed  for  this  pur- 
pose were  armed  with  a  short  heavy  club,  which  they 
hurled  at  the  proscribed  animal  with  such  force  as  to 
kill  or  cripple  it  at  a  single  blow.  "  It  happened  one 
day  that,  close  to  the  edge  of  the  river,  near  the  Ferdi- 
nand's Briicke,  one  of  these  men  flung  his  stick  at  a 
wretched  dog,  but  with  such  bad  aim  that  it  fell  into  the 
river.  The  poor  animal,  following  its  instincts  or  its 
teaching,  immediately  plunged  in,  redeemed  the  stick, 
and  laid  it  down  at  the  feet  of  its  owner,  who  snatching 
it  up,  dashed  out  the  creature's  brains."  And  yet 
Christian  legislation,  the  civilization  which  claims  to  be 
based  on  a  religion  of  mercy  and  compassion,  has  no  law 
to  punish  such  a  monster  of  cruelty  and  base  ingrati- 
tude, but  rewards  him  for  his  ignominious  deed.  In 
fact,  the  conduct  of  this  vile  fellow  was  only  the  logical 
outcome  and  rude  application  of  our  current  anthropo- 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  147 

centric  ethics,  as  its  effects  are  necessarily  exhibited  in  a 
coarse  and  common  nature.  "A  ruffian  in  the  midst 
of  Christendom,"  says  Father  Taylor,  "is  the  savage 
of  savages."  But  here  the  development  of  ruffianism 
is  due  directly  to  the  influence  of  Christian  zoopsy- 
chology and  the  brutal  exercise  of  what  Shelley  calls 
the  "  terrible  prerogative  "  which  it  confers  upon  man. 

It  is  for  these  reasons  that  charitable  foundations 
for  animals  are  usually  regarded  and  often  ridiculed 
as  the  amiable  idiosyncrasies  of  eccentric  individuals, 
or  as  the  manifestations  of  a  mild  and  harmless  mono- 
mania peculiar  to  old  maids  and  withered  beldames, 
who,  having  found  no  worthier  outlet  for  their  loving 
natures,  are  content  to  pour  the  flood  of  their  pent-up 
affections  into  this  channel.  It  is,  in  sooth,  a  curious 
circumstance,  and  quite  significant  of  the  character  of 
our  civilization,  that  endowments  of  this  kind  are  not 
with  us,  as  in  the  East,  the  normal  and  legitimate  ex- 
pression of  a  humane  and  benevolent  spirit,  but  rather 
serve  incidentally  as  the  waste  pipe  of  suporessed  and 
soured  emotions,  having  their  real  source  in  a  generous 
and  sensitive  nature  perverted  by  pessimistic  and  mis- 
anthropic views  of  life.  Thence  it  comes  that,  with  us 
Occidentals,  the  love  of  animals,  instead  of  being  the 
proper  expansion  of  philanthropic  sentiment,  too  often 
springs  directly  from  intense  and  morbid  hatred  of  man- 
kind. It  was  this  feeling  that  made  Schopenhauer 
shun  the  society  of  his  fellow-men  during  life,  and  in 
dying  bequeath  his  property  to  his  poodles.  "Men," 
he  declared,  "are  the  devils  of  the  earth,  and  ani- 
mals are  the  souls  which  they  take  pleasure  in  torment- 
ing. This  state  of  things  is  the  consequence  of  that 
installation  scene  in  the  garden  of  Eden."     Solomon, 


14:8  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

too,  in  one  of  his  spleeny  and  cynical  moods,  wlien 
he  "hated  life,"  and,  surfeited  with  its  pleasures,  de- 
nounced them  all  as  "  vanity  and  vexation  of  spirit," 
affirmed  that  "  a  man  hath  no  pre-eminence  above  a 
beast "  ;  but  in  making  this  remark  his  purpose  was 
not  to  elevate  the  beast,  but  to  degrade  the  man.  Both 
are  reduced  to  the  same  plane  of  transitory  existence 
by  a  process,  not  of  levelling  up,  but  of  levelling  down. 
"  All  go  to  one  place,  all  are  of  the  dust,  and  all  turn 
to  dust  again.  Who  knoweth  the  spirit  of  man,  whether 
it  goeth  upward,  and  the  spirit  of  the  beast,  whether  it 
goeth  downward  to  the  earth  ?  "  The  implication  of 
the  passage  is  that  however  gross  and  grovelling  a  beast 
may  be,  man  is  no  better. 

In  many  portions  of  the  East  it  is  customary  for 
Brahmans  and  Buddhists  to  express  their  joy  and  grati- 
tude on  recovering  from  sickness  or  on  receiving  any 
good  fortune,  not  by  chanting  a  Te  Deum,  but  by  going 
to  the  market  place,  where  wild  birds  are  exposed  for 
sale  by  Jewish,  Mohammedan,  and  Christian  fowlers, 
purchasing  a  number  of  them,  carrying  them  to  the 
city  gates,  opening  their  cages,  and  restoring  to  the 
captives  their  former  liberty.  Under  similar  circum- 
stances a  European  would  most  probably  return  thanks 
by  inviting  his  friends  to  eat  birds  with  him — just  as 
the  typical  Englishman  thinks  the  best  use  he  can 
make  of  a  fine  day  is  to  go  out  and  kill  something.  ^ 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  general  attitude  of 
mind  is,  in  a  great  degree,  the  result  of  our  current 
religious  ideas  and  traditions  and  the  early  training 
that  grows  out  of  them.  We  are  ourselves  hardly  con- 
scious how  deeply  ingrained  are  our  prejudices  on  this 
point,  and  how  very  difficult  it  is  to  escape  the  insen- 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  149 

sible  pressure  of  these  moral  influences  which  inclose 
us  like  an  atmosphere. 

Not  long  ago  a  German  Protestant  parson,  when 
asked  to  preach  a  sermon  in  support  of  a  society  for 
the  prevention  of  cruelty  to  animals,  replied  that,  al- 
though heartily  sympathizing  with  the  cause,  he  could 
not  accede  to  the  request,  since  the  Bible  did  not  furnish 
him  with  any  text  appropriate  to  such  a  discourse.  As 
a  humane  man,  he  would  be  willing  to  make  a  speech 
in  favour  of  it  outside  of  the  pulpit;  but  as  a  clergy- 
man and  divinely  commissioned  expounder  of  the 
sacred  Scriptures,  he  was  forced  to  pass  it  over  in 
silence.  Evidently  the  good  parson  was  not  well  versed 
in  the  cunning  arts  of  modern  homiletics,  and  had  little 
skill  in  the  marvellous  exegetic  jugglery  which  easily 
conjures  into  passages  of  Holy  Writ  ideas  and  prin- 
ciples of  which  the  writers  never  dreamed;  otherwise 
he  might  have  simply  cut  the  Bible  for  his  text,  as  was 
the  practice  of  ancient  sortilege,  and  preached  from 
any  passage  thus  selected  a  sermon  suitable  to  the  occa- 
sion. 

Some  years  since  the  Thierschutzverein  of  Munich 
issued  an  appeal  to  the  public,  stating  the  aims  and  ob- 
jects of  the  association,  and  seeking  to  rouse  the 
lethargic  Bavarians  to  a  more  earnest  appreciation  of 
its  usefulness  and  to  greater  liberality  in  its  behalf.  In 
addition  to  purely  secular  considerations  and  motives 
of  mere  morality,  the  appeal  was  also  urged  on  religious 
grounds,  and  sustained  by  the  following  quotations 
from  the  Bible:  "  A  righteous  man  regardeth  the  life 
of  his  beast;  but  the  tender  mercies  of  the  wicked  are 
cruel"  (Prov.  xii,  10).  "He  giveth  to  the  beast  his 
food,  and  to  the  young  ravens  which  cry  "  (Ps.  cxlvii, 


150  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

9).  "  He  causeth  the  grass  to  grow  for  the  cattle,  and 
herb  for  the  service  of  man:  that  he  may  bring  forth 
food  out  of  the  earth  "  (Ps.  civ.  14).  "  Who  provideth 
for  the  raven  his  food?  when  his  young  ones  cry  unto 
God,  they  wander  for  lack  of  meat"  (Job  xxxviii,  41). 
"  Are  not  two  sparrows  sold  for  a  farthing?  and  one 
of  them  shall  not  fall  on  the  ground  without  your 
Father  "  (Matt,  x,  29). 

There  could  be  no  better  illustration  of  the  poverty 
of  our  Holy  Scriptures  on  this  subject,  and  the  little 
thought  given  to  it  by  their  authors  than  the  citation 
of  these  texts,  not  one  of  which  (except,  perhaps,  the 
first)  has  the  slightest  relevancy  or  was  meant  to  teach 
kindness  to  animals,  and  to  inculcate  the  principles 
advocated  in  the  Munich  circular.  Even  the  passage 
from  the  Proverbs  is  a  mere  statement  of  fact,  designed 
to  illustrate  the  character  of  the  righteous  man,  who 
regardeth  even  the  life  of  his  beast,  and  is  contrasted 
with  the  wicked,  whose  bowels  (as  it  ought  to  be  trans- 
lated) are  cruel.  There  is  no  recognition  of  the  rights 
of  the  beast,  and  no  injunction  to  respect  them.  The 
whole  reference  is  to  man  and  the  sense  of  his  own 
worthiness  as  his  standard  of  conduct.  In  the  other 
verses,  cattle,  ravens,  and  sparrows  are  mentioned  sim- 
ply to  show  the  watchful  care  and  providence  of  God 
toward  man.  Here  and  there  we  meet  with  an  isolated 
intimation  of  compensatory  justice  or  tender  feeling, 
as  in  the  paragraph  of  the  Mosaic  law  prohibiting  the 
muzzling  of  the  ox  when  it  treadeth  out  the  corn,  and 
the  sentimental  or  sanitary  scruple  about  seething  a 
kid  in  its  mother's  milk.  It  was  the  same  crude  and 
rudimentary  conception  of  compensation  that  led  the 
Greeks  to  decree  that  the  asses  which  bore  the  stones 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  151 

for  building  the  temple  of  Eleusis  should  be  permitted 
to  graze  with  impunity  within  the  sacred  grounds. 

The  Jews  were  also  forbidden  to  take  the  parent 
bird  while  "  sitting  upon  the  young  or  upon  the  eggs/^ 
although  they  were  permitted  to  rob  her  of  the  young. 
This  provision  was  unquestionably  a  wise  one,  intended 
to  prevent  the  reckless  destruction  and  consequent 
diminution  of  the  supply  of  birds.  But  there  is  no 
element  of  kindness  or  compassion  in  it,  any  more  than 
there  is  in  modern  laws  for  the  preservation  of  game,! 
which  are  designed  solely  to  insure  and  increase  the  f 
pleasures  of  the  chase,  protecting  animals  in  order  to 
enhance  the  sport  of  hunting  and  killing  them.  The 
regulation  was  of  a  purely  prudential  and  economical 
character,  like  that  contained  in  the  same  code,  for- 
bidding the  husbandman  to  sow  divers  seeds  in  his 
vineyard  and  thus  deteriorate  the  quality  of  the  grapes. 
The  lawgiver  was  not  moved  by  mercy  to  enact  the 
former  provision  of  the  law  any  more  than  the  latter. 

In  like  manner  William  Cowper  says: 

I  would  not  enter  on  my  list  of  friends 
(Though  graced  with  polish'd  manners  and  fine  seni 
Yet  wanting  sensibility)  the  man 
"Who  needlessly  sets  foot  upon  a  worm. 

But  this  assertion  does  not  imply  on  the  part  of 
the  poet  any  high  appreciation  of  the  worth  of  worms, 
such  as  Darwin  shows  in  describing  the  important  func- 
tions which  they  perform  in  the  economy  of  Nature, 
but  instances  them  on  account  of  their  supposed  worth- 
lessness,  in  order  to  emphasize  his  estimation  of  sensi- 
bility as  an  ornament  of  human  character. 

Throughout  the  Old  and  New  Testament  animals 


152  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

are  always  regarded  from  an  anthropocentric  point  of 
view,  or  in  some  satellitic  relation  to  man.  They  are 
pronounced  clean  or  unclean,  not  on  account  of  their 
own  habits  and  propensities,  but  according  to  an  arbi- 
trary standard  of  ceremonial  purity,  intended  to  secure 
his  ritual  or  constructive  cleanliness.  He  classifies 
them,  like  fungi,  into  edible  and  inedible,  or  "  the 
beast  that  may  be  eaten  and  the  beast  that  may  not 
be  eaten.^^  They  are  made  the  scapegoats  of  his  in- 
iquities; and  minute  descriptions  are  given  of  their 
sacrificial  qualities  and  uses,  whereby  their  innocent  and 
untainted  blood  is  shed  in  expiation  of  human  trespasses 
and  sins.  They  are  punished  for  his  offences.  Because 
the  Israelities  were  incredulous  and  disobedient,  God 
not  only  laid  waste  their  vines  and  their  sycamore  trees, 
but  "  he  gave  up  their  cattle  also  to  the  hail,  and  their 
flocks  to  hot  thunderbolts."  Peter  looks  upon  them 
merely  as  "  natural  brute  beasts  made  to  be  taken  and 
destroyed." 

This  spirit  which  everywhere  prevails  in  the  Jewish 
Scriptures  and  the  Gospel  records  is  predominant  in 
patristic  literature  and  mediaeval  hagiology.  It  is  said 
of  Cardinal  Bellarmine  that  he  used  to  let  bugs  and 
insects  bite  him  undisturbed,  on  the  plea  that  "  we  shall 
have  heaven  to  reward  us  for  our  temporal  sufferings, 
but  these  poor  creatures  have  nothing  to  look  forward 
to  except  the  enjoj^ment  of  the  present  life."  Accord- 
ing to  his  fellow-Jesuit  and  biographer  Fuligatti,  his 
object,  however,  was  not  so  much  to  gratify  and  regale 
the  vermin,  as  to  exercise  his  own  patience  and  pre- 
pare his  soul  for  paradise.  "  For  this  reason  he  would 
not  brush  away  flies  from  his  face,  although  they  are 
wont  to  be  very  annoying,  especially  at  Eome  in  sum- 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  153 

mer.'*    It  was  less  an  act  of  kindness  than  a  lazy  and 
nasty  means  of  grace  and  of  sanctification. 

The  same  penitential  path  to  holiness  was  pursued 
by  St.  Macarius,  of  whom  an  old  chronicler  relates: 
"  It  happed  on  a  tyme  that  he  kylled  a  flee  that  bote 
hym;  and  when  he  sawe  the  blode  of  this  flee,  he  re- 
pented hym,  and  anone  unclothed  hym,  and  wente 
naked  in  the  deserte  vi.  monethes  and  suffred  hym- 
selfe  to  be  byten  of  flyes." 

The  lives  of  the  saints  are  full  of  legends  concern- 
ing their  friendly  and  familiar  relations  with  wild  ani-? 
mals,  and  these  stories  are  adduced  as  proofs  of  the 
power  of  holiness  even  over  the  brute  creation.  Thus 
the  beasts  and  birds  of  the  forest  are  said  to  have  come 
at  the  call  of  St.  Columbanus,  flocking  and  frolicking 
about  him  like  kittens  (ludentes  laetitia,  velut  catuli), 
and  squirrels  descended  from  the  trees  and  sat  on  his 
shoulders  or  nestled  in  the  folds  of  his  mantle.  A  pack 
of  wolves  passed  by  him  as  he  was  kneeling  in  prayer, 
and  did  him  no  harm;  and  at  his  command  a  trouble- 
some bear,  which  infested  a  valley  near  Anegray,  quit 
the  country  and  never  returned.  A  mischievous  raven 
stole  his  mittens  (tegumenta  manum  aut  wantos);  but 
the  saint  threatened  that  all  its  callow  young  should 
die  unless  the  mittens  were  immediately  restored,  which 
was  done  accordingly.  St.  Gall  spoke  to  a  bear  in 
Latin,  ordering  it  to  bring  a  stick  of  wood  for  the  fire, 
and  Bruin,  whose  available  knowledge  of  this  language 
was  evidently  superior  to  that  of  many  a  modern  pro- 
fessor, obeyed  forthwith.  St.  Goar  bade  the  hinds 
(cervas)  come  out  of  the  wood  and  be  milked,  and,  un- 
like the  spirits  which  Glendower  could  call  from  the 
vasty  deep,  they  came  when  they  were  summoned.    The 


154  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

same  holy  man,  on  paying  a  visit  to  the  bishop,  hung 
his  hat  on  a  sunbeam  which  came  in  through  the  win- 
dow. Whether  the  hat  would  still  remain  suspended 
in  the  air  or  fall  to  the  floor,  if  the  sun  should  chance 
to  go  under  a  cloud,  is  a  point  left  undecided  by  the 
hagiologist. 

Legendary  literature  records  "  a  deal  of  skimble- 
skamble  stuff  "  of  this  sort,  which  it  would  be  tedious 
to  repeat.  All  the  glory  of  these  acts  haloes  round  the 
brows  of  the  saints,  whose  kindly  fellowship  with  the 
lower  animals,  although  the  natural  result  of  a  solitary, 
anchoretic  life  in  regions  remote  from  human  habita- 
tions, is  regarded  as  something  miraculous,  and  has 
therefore  failed  to  influence  the  conduct  of  ordinary 
mortals  to  any  great  extent.  It  is  said  that  until  the 
beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  it  was  deemed 
sacrilegious  to  kill  a  hare  in  the  parish  on  the  Tanat, 
in  which  was  the  shrine  of  St.  Monacella,  the  protec- 
tress of  hares.  As  a  rule,  however,  such  saintly  guard- 
ianship contributes  very  little  to  the  security  of  the 
creatures  under  their  tutelary  care. 

St.  James  of  Venice,  a  saint  of  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, used  to  buy  and  release  the  birds  tied  up  and 
tortured  by  Italian  boys,  and  Leonardi  da  Vinci  was  ac- 
customed to  purchase  caged  birds  and  set  them  free. 
It  is  also  related  of  Pythagoras  that  he  once  bought 
the  entire  draught  of  a  fisherman's  net  near  Metapontus 
and  restored  the  fish  to  their  native  element.  But  these 
isolated  exhibitions  of  tender  charity  have  not  dimin- 
ished the  slaughter  nor  prevented  the  caging  of  small 
birds  in  Italy,  nor  have  they  saved  the  eyes  of  a  single 
thrush  from  the  hot  iron  with  which  the  Italians  are 
wont  to  destroy  the  sight  of  these  songsters,  in  order 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  155 

that  the  perpetual  darkness  and  loneliness  of  their 
lives  may  not  only  increase  the  quantity  of  their  song, 
but  also  impart  to  it  a  peculiar  quality  and  sweet  strain 
of  sadness. 

St.  Anthony  of  Padua  preached  the  gospel  to  the 
fishes;  but  whatever  effect  his  sermons  may  have  had 
in  saving  them  in  the  future  life  from  the  devil's  toast- 
ing fork,  they  were  of  no  avail  in  rescuing  a  single 
finny  denizen  of  the  deep  from  the  frying  pan  in  this 
world.  The  sole  object  of  the  story  is  to  illustrate  and 
glorify  the  moving  eloquence  of  the  saint,  who,  after 
delivering  his  homily,  may  have  gone  back  to  his  cloister 
and  dined  on  his  parishioners  from  the  pond  with  as 
much  relish  as  a  backsliding  Fiji  neophyte  would  en- 
joy a  sparerib  of  his  proselyter  and  pastor.  Pious 
Christians  and  good  Catholics  do  not  deny  themselves 
the  exciting  pleasures  of  deerstalking,  because  St. 
Hubert  had  a  vision  of  the  cross  between  the  antlers 
of  a  stag,  and  gave  himself  up  to  a  life  of  religious 
meditation;  on  the  contrary,  the  canonized  Bishop  of 
Liege  has  become  the  patron  of  hunters  and  the  pro- 
tector of  the  chase.  The  legend  of  the  wolf  of  Gubbio, 
which,  at  the  injunction  of  St.  Francis,  abstained  from 
mutton  and  obtained  its  food  by  going  from  house  to 
house  in  the  village,  like  a  begging  friar,  has  had  no 
reformatory  effect  on  wolves  in  general,  nor  was  it  in- 
tended to  indicate  a  possible  or  desirable  change  of 
lupine  habits,  but  solely  to  exhibit  the  power  of  the 
saintliness  capable  of  working  such  a  miracle.  The 
practical  ethical  value  of  all  these  myths  is  simply 
null. 

As  the  records  of  ecclesiastical  excommunifjation 
show,  it  is  only  over  noxious  animals,  for  the  purpose 
11 


156  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

of  cursing  them,  that  the  Church  has  claimed  juris- 
diction or  cared  to  assert  it.  In  behalf  of  the  count- 
less beasts  which  toil  out  their  blameless  lives  in  the 
service  and  at  the  mercy  of  man,  she  never  utters  a 
word  of  authority,  nor  Hfts  her  crooked  fingers  in  the 
form  of  benediction.  True,  she  assigns  a  place  in  the 
calendar  to  St.  Anthony,  the  patron  and  nominal  pro- 
tector of  animals;  and  from  the  17th  to  the  23d  of 
January  Eomans  of  all  classes — princes,  peasants,  car- 
dinals, cabmen,  and  campagnuoli — used  to  bring  their 
horses  and  asses  to  be  blessed  and  sprinkled  with  holy 
water  before  the  old  church  of  S.  Antonia  Abbate  in 
the  Piazza  di  S.  Maria  Maggiore.  But  in  most  cases, 
where  some  merciful  intervention  was  actually  needed 
in  favour  of  overworked  and  much-abused  hacks  and 
cart  horses,  this  festa  proved  to  be  a  holiday  for  the 
beast  far  less  than  for  its  owner,  who  rode  through  the 
streets  arrayed  in  his  best  apparel,  and  adorned  with 
feathers  and  ribbons  of  brilliant  hues,  and  spent  the 
day  in  careering  from  one  wine  shop  to  another  and 
carousing  with  his  friends.  The  ceremony,  which  al- 
ways seemed  to  be  performed  perfunctorily,  as  though 
it  were  deemed  an  indulgent  concession  to  the  sancta 
simpUcitas  of  the  old  Franciscan,  was  accepted  as  a  joke 
and  utilized  as  a  lark,  and  never  exerted  any  appreciable 
influence  in  restraining  violence  or  inspiring  kindness 
toward  the  lower  animals.  Indeed,  the  tutelar  saint  is 
seldom  invoked  during  the  rest  of  the  year,  except  in 
maledictions.  "  May  St.  Anthony  smite  you!  "  is  still 
the  popoUno's  favourite  imprecation  on  his  horse  or  don- 
key; and  fearing  lest  the  request  should  not  be  granted, 
or  willing  to  show  his  faith  by  his  works,  he  plies  the 
lash  or  wields  the  cruel  pungolo  in  the  saint's  stead. 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  15Y 

A  similar  festival  is  celebrated  in  the  highlands 
of  Bavaria  and  especially  at  Tolz,  on  the  6th  of  Noyem- 
her,  in  honour  of  St.  Leonhard,  the  local  patron  of 
horses  and  neat  cattle,  which  on  that  occasion  are  curi- 
ously adorned  with  many-coloured  fillets  and  flags  and 
driven  in  procession,  attended  by  priests  with  the  sacred 
emblems  of  the  altar  and  holy  banners  and  all  the 
cheap  pomp  and  tinsel  trappings  of  the  Church.  In 
this  corso  (Leonhardfahrt)  each  peasant  strives  to  outdo 
the  other  in  gaudiness  of  equipment,  and  thinks  more 
of  his  own  bravery  than  of  the  comfort  of  the  quad- 
rupeds for  whose  welfare  the  feast  is  supposed  to  have 
been  instituted.  Whatever  benefit  may  accrue  to  the 
brute  is  purely  incidental  and  wholly  secondary  to  the 
pride  and  pleasure  of  the  owner. 

The  mystic  and  visionary  pater  seraphicus,  Francis 
of  Assisi,  sang  his  Cantico  delle  Creature,  in  which  he 
thanked  the  Lord  for  brother  sun,  and  sister  moon, 
and  mother  earth  prolific  of  fruits  and  flowers.  He 
even  greeted  the  wind  and  the  fire  as  brothers,  and 
the  water  and  bodily  death  as  sisters,  but  passed  over, 
in  significant  silence,  all  sentient  creatures  and  recog- 
nised no  kinship  with  beast,  or  bird,  or  creeping  thing.  I 
On  another  occasion,  it  is  true,  as  he  was  taking  a  walk 
near  Beragna,  he  addressed  the  birds  as  his  "winged 
brothers,"  and  bade  them  praise  their  Creator  and  love 
Him  with  all  their  heart.  And  the  birds,  it  is  added, 
came  to  him  and  perched  on  his  hand  and  let  him 
stroke  their  plumage  and  would  not  depart  from  him 
until  he  made  the  sign  of  the  cross  over  them  and  dis- 
missed them  with  his  blessing.  In  the  neighbourhood 
of  Greccia  he  freed  a  hare  from  a  snare  and  the  grate- 
ful creature  took  refuge  in  his  bosom  and  refused  to 


158  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

leave  him.  Little  lambs  are  also  said  to  have  followed 
after  him,  which,  however,  is  by  no  means  a  marvellous 
thing  for  little  lambs  to  do.  He  reproached  a  butcher, 
asking,  "  Why  do  you  hang  up  and  torture  the  lambs, 
my  brothers,  in  this  manner?  "  To  this  naive  and  utter- 
ly idle  question  the  butcher  might  have  replied  that 
his  "  sin's  not  accidental,  but  a  trade,"  and  that  if  it 
is  a  crime  to  slaughter  sheep,  then  the  eater  of  mutton 
chops  must  be  regarded  as  particeps  criminis.  iVgain, 
he  expressed  his  sympathy  for  some  turtle  doves  in  a 
cage,  saying:  "Why  have  you,  my  dear  sisters,  simple, 
innocent,  and  chaste  creatures,  allowed  yourselves  to  be 
caught?" — a  remark  that  would  seem  to  censure  the 
foolishness  of  the  birds,  rather  than  the  ruthlessness  of 
'the  fowler.  Indeed,  all  this  cheap  commiseration  of 
suffering  creatures  remained  a  barren  sentiment,  which 
did  not  contribute  one  Jot  or  one  tittle  to  the  allevia- 
tion of  their  present  distress,  nor  tend  in  the  least  to 
prevent  its  recurrence.  There  is  no  evidence  that  the 
example  of  the  soft-hearted  saints  ever  converted  a 
single  hard-hearted  sinner  from  the  error  of  his  ways 
and  led  him  henceforth  to  treat  the  lower  animals 
with  tenderer  care  and  consideration.  Nor  is  there 
any  necessity  of  discarding  these  strange  stories  as  mere 
pious  fictions.  Wild  animals  might  easily  be  attracted 
to  a  gentle  hermit  in  the  solitude  of  the  forest,  par- 
ticularly as  they  were,  in  most  cases,  unaccustomed  to 
jjhuman  beings  and  had  not  yet  learned  to  fear  them. 
Birds  and  beasts  on  islands  uninhabited  by  man  have 
uniformly  shown  the  most  perfect  confidence  in  the 
discoverers  of  these  islands  and  only  learned  by  experi- 
ence that  man  was  to  be  avoided  as  their  enemy.  Some 
individuals  have  a  certain  magnetic  influence  over  ani- 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  159 

mals.  Hawthorne  ascribes  this  peculiar  power  to  the 
faunlike  Donatello,  and  Thoreau  could  put  himself 
into  relations  of  sympathy  with  the  mute,  cold-blooded, 
and  unsocial  fish  and  make  it  swim  into  his  hand. 
King  Ludwig  I  of  Bavaria  used  to  admire  and  envy 
an  old  woman,  to  whom  the  birds  in  the  Court  Garden 
at  Munich  would  come  in  flocks,  fluttering  about  her 
head  and  perching  on  her  shoulders.  His  Majesty  en- 
deavoured to  inspire  them  with  the  same  confidence, 
but  no  calling  or  coaxing  could  induce  them  to  ap- 
proach him.  He  could  not  understand  why  they  should 
prefer  to  light  on  a  plebeian  rather  than  on  a  royal 
hand;  and  finally  in  despair  of  their  vulgar  taste  de- 
sisted from  all  further  efforts  to  win  their  favour  and 
settled  a  pension  for  life  on  the  old  hag  who  could 
work  such  witchery. 

"  Fromm  waren  die  Miinchener  zu  jeder  Zeit,"  says 
one  of  their  most  quaint  and  genial  chroniclers;  and 
there  are  few  cities  in  Europe  where  the  priests  are 
more  zealous  or  exert  a  greater  influence  ov^r  the  popu- 
lace, or  where  the  authority  of  the  Church  is  more  re- 
spected than  in  Munich.  Yet  no  voice  of  warning  or 
reproof  was  ever  heard  from  chancel  or  confessional 
against  the  cruelty  to  animals,  which  used  to  disgrace 
the  Bavarian  capital.  Veal  is  the  favourite  food  of  the 
inhabitants,  and  is  consumed  in  enormous  quantities; 
and  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  affirm  that,  before  the  erec- 
tion of  the  slaughterhouse  outside  of  the  city,  every 
calf  carried  to  the  shambles  was  made  to  suffer  in 
transitu  the  tortures  of  a  man  crucified  with  his  head 
downward.  An  archiepiscopal  Hirtenhrief  would  have 
sufficed  to  check  this  brutality  toward  beasts;  but  un- 
fortunately no  such  writ  of  mercy,  no  pastoral  letter 


160  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

of  pity,  ever  issued  from  the  palace  in  Promenaden- 
strasse.  The  late  pope,  ninth  of  Piuses  and  first  of 
infallible  pontiffs,  decided  ex-cathedra  that  animals  have 
no  soul,  and  that,  therefore,  we  are  not  bound  to  them 
by  any  of  those  moral  duties  and  sacred  obligations 
which  we  owe,  in  general,  to  our  fellow-men,  and  in 
particular  to  them  that  are  of  the  household  of  faith 
and  are  united  to  us  by  ties  of  religion.  This  opinion 
is  fully  indorsed  and  practically  exemplified  by  the 
Italian  donkey  driver,  who,  to  every  remonstrance 
against  the  wanton  beating  and  bruising  of  his  patient 
beast  of  burden,  retorts  "  Non  e  cristiano/'  at  the  same 
time  dealing  a  succession  of  vigorous  thwacks  with  a 
heavy  cudgel  by  way  of  adding  emphasis  to  his  dog- 
matic assertion.  Thus,  the  bipedal  brute  continues  to 
maul  and  maim  the  quadrupedal  beast  in  the  spirit 
of  the  Vaticanic  dictum,  and  in  accordance  with  a 
religious  principle  so  clear  and  simple  as  to  be  com- 
prehensible to  the  dullest  asinaio:  the  poor  creature 
is  not  a  Christian,  and  therefore  has  no  rights  which 
a  good  Catholic  is  bound  to  respect.* 

"  Non  e  cosa  hattezzata  "  (it  is  not  a  baptized  thing) 
is  the  Italian  peasant's  justification  of  any  suffering 
he  may  wantonly  inflict  upon  the  lower  forms  of  life. 
In  England  the  cruel  pastime  of  "cock-throwing," 
formerly  practised  by  men  and  especially  by  schoolboys 
on  Shrove  Tuesday,  has  claimed  a  religious  origin  and 
consecration  by  being  brought  into  causal  connection 
with  Peter's  denial  of  Christ,  as  the  poet  Sedley  sings: 


*  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  Sheffield,  England,  "  Chris- 
tian "  is  popularly  used  to  signify  a  man  in  distinction  from  a 
brute  beast. 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  161 

Mayst  thou  be  punished  for  St.  Peter's  crime, 
And  on  Shrove  Tuesday  perish  in  thy  prime. 

Since  the  crowing  of  the  cock  served  as  a  rebuke 
to  the  recreant  apostle  and  caused  him  to  repent  of 
his  treachery,  it  is  difficult  to  see  why  this  valiant  and 
vigilant  fowl  should  be  held  responsible  for  his  cow- 
ardice. On  the  contrary,  one  would  imagine  that  all 
cocks  would  henceforth  be  as  highly  honoured  and 
fondly  cherished  in  Christendom  as  the  descendants 
of  the  geese,  which  saved  the  Capitol,  were  by  the  an- 
cient Eomans.  But  it  is  the  fatality  of  all  vicarious 
schemes  of  retribution  to  reverse  our  natural  and  un- 
perverted  conceptions  of  justice  and  to  make  the  in- 
nocent expiate  the  misdeeds  of  the  guilty. 

The  efforts  of  some  of  the  popes  to  suppress  the 
Spanish  bullfights  were  due,  not  to  any  pity  for  the  ^ 
tortured  animals,  but  solely  to  the  desire  to  prevent ' 
the  destruction  of  human  life;  and  these  disgusting 
spectacles,  which  are  the  favourite  sport  of  the  most 
Christian  nation  of  Europe,  still  take  place  under  the 
auspices  of  the  Church,  a  chapel,  in  which  mass  is  read 
before  the  massacre  begins,  being  connected  with  the 
arena.  There  the  picador  says  his  prayers  and  the 
functions  of  religion  are  most  incongruously  mixed  up 
with  funciones  de  tows.  That  the  weekly  proceeds  of 
these  holiday  butcheries  in  Madrid  should  be  devoted 
to  the  general  hospital  is  a  most  striking  example  of 
anthropocentric  selfishness  and  an  unconscious  satire 
on  Christian  charity.  Indeed,  when  a  society  for  the 
prevention  of  cruelty  to  animals  was  first  established 
at  Madrid,  the  Spaniards,  whom  foreign  influences  and 
fashion  had  brought  into  sympathy  with  the  move- 
ment, proposed  that  a  grand  bullfight  should  be  ar- 


162  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS. 

ranged  in  order  to  raise  funds  for  the  newly  organized 
and  merciful  institution. 

^  The  idea  of  blood-relationship,  which,  as  we  have 
already  shown,  formed  the  basis  of  primitive  society 
and  of  which  the  doctrine  of  humanity  is  but  a  wider 
development,  has  received  still  further  extension 
through  recent  scientific  researches  tending  to  estab- 
lish a  genealogical  connection  between  man  and  the 
lower  animals.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  gen- 
eral acceptance  of  the  theory  of  evolution  would  exert 
upon  the  Western  mind  a  wholesome  influence  in 
favour  of  greater  consideration  for  all  forms  and  em- 
bodiments of  life,  corresponding  to  the  benign  effect 
which  the  belief  in  metempsychosis  has  produced  upon 
the  less  positive  and  more  mystical  and  metaphysical 

^mind  of  the  East. 

Wer  sich  selbst  und  Andre  kennt 

Wird  auch  hier  erkennen ; 
Orient  und  Occident 

Sind  nicht  mehr  zu  trennen. 

Who  knows  his  own  and  others'  bent 

Will  here,  too,  clearly  see 
That  Orient  and  Occident 

Can  no  more  severed  be. 

Not  only  is  the  present  drift  of  scientific  research 
strongly  set  in  this  direction,  but  minds  of  the  high- 
est culture  in  every  department  of  thought  share  in  the 
same  movement.  Thus  comparative  psychology,  as  will 
be  shown  in  a  subsequent  chapter,  is  gradually  over- 
turning one  barrier  after  another,  which  a  narrow  and 
obsolescent  metaphysics  had  erected  between  man  and 
beast  in  respect  to  their  mental  faculties  and  moral 


METEMPSYCHOSIS.  163 

qualities,  and  even  the  comparative  study  of  languages 
is  rapidly  removing  from  this   field   of  investigation 
artificial  obstacles  of  a  like  character,  which  an  anti- 
quated philology  had  declared  to  be  fixed  and  impass- 
able.    These  points  are  fully  discussed  elsewhere  and 
are  referred  to  here  only  to  indicate  their  ethical  bear- 
ings upon  the  question  of  animals'  rights  and  to  show  j 
the  practical  agreement,  in  this  respect,  between  the] 
results  of  Oriental  speculation  and  of  modern  evolu-' 
tionary  science. 

The  metempsychosist  holds  that  the  scintilla  animce 
divincB  or  divine  spark  wanders  through  eight  million 
four  hundred  thousand  creatures  before  it  is  fit  to 
animate  a  human  being.  Still  every  incarnation  is  an 
essential  and  sacred  link  in  the  unbroken  chain  of 
existence  that  connects  the  mollusk  with  man  and 
slowly  lifts  the  whole  out  of  the  mirage  of  phenomena 
and  the  illusions  of  selfhood  to  ultimate  reunion  with 
the  Supreme  and  Eternal  Spirit,  from  which  it  ema- 
nated, and  which  is  the  only  reality.  The  evolutionist 
teaches  that  the  struggle  for  existence  and  the  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest  through  natural  selection  went  on 
millions  of  years  through  successive  ages  before  the 
principle  of  life  or  intelligence  found  its  highest  em- 
bodiment in  man.  According  to  both  of  these  theories 
man  is  not  an  isolated  product  of  Nature,  called  into 
existence  by  a  divine  fiat,  but  a  part  of  the  general 
order  of  things  with  no  break  in  the  continuity  of  his 
development  out  of  the  lowest  organisms  from  the 
protoplasmic  cell  upwards. 

It  is  evident  that  our  moral  and  religious  instruc- 
tion, based  upon  the  anthropocentric  assumptions  of 
Judaism  and  Christianity,  has  been  hitherto  lamentably 


164:  EVOLUTIONAL  ETHICS, 

defective.  Perhaps,  with  the  introduction  of  more 
rational  views  of  cosmogony  and  anthropology,  and 
broader  and  more  generous  principles  of  psychology 
into  our  elementary  text-books,  through  the  union  of 
a  sounder  physics  with  a  larger  metaphysics,  our  chil- 
dren's children  may  finally  learn  that  there  are  in- 
alienable animal  as  well  as  human  rights,  and  that, 
in  respect  to  the  ties  of  moral  obligation  and  the  claims 
to  kind  and  just  treatment  which  they  imply,  not 
only  "  all  nations  of  men,"  as  Paul  affirmed  on  Mar's 
Hill,  but,  as  the  Indian  sage  declared,  "  all  living 
creatures  are  of  one  blood/'  To  the  Hebrew  decalogue 
and  the  Christian  beatitudes  must  be  added  the  first  of 
Buddha's  ten  commandments: 

Kill  not  for  Pity's  sake,  nor  dare  to  slay 
The  meanest  creature  on  its  upward  way. 


n. 
ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 


CHAPTER  Y. 

MIND   IN  MAN  AND   BRUTE. 

Oriental  speculation  and  Occidental  science.  Metempsychosis  and 
evolution.  Psychical  kinship  of  man  and  brute.  Automatic 
and  volitional  mental  action.  Freedom  of  the  will  in  man 
and  the  lower  animals.  Consciousness  in  the  lowest  organ- 
isms. Protoplasm  and  protista.  Chemical  fabrication  of 
products  of  vital  forces.  Berzelius  and  Wohler.  Schneider's 
classification  of  animal  impulses.  The  nutritive  impulse  and 
its  final  purpose.  Oken's  classification.  Impulses  of  sensa- 
tion, perception,  conception,  and  thought  in  t  le  order  of  their 
development.  Conjoint  action  of  these  impulses  in  the  men- 
tal activity  of  the  lower  animals.  Interesting  experiment  of 
Mobius  with  a  pike.  Incorrect  inferences.  How  a  horse 
learns  the  meaning  of  "  whoa."  Pains  taken  by  parent  birds 
to  teach  their  young.  Heine's  lizard.  Untenable  distinctions 
between  men  and  brutes.  Too  great  importance  attached  to 
man's  ability  to  look  upward.  Herbart's  exact  and  concise 
statement  of  the  grounds  of  man's  superiority.  Influence 
of  infancy  on  human  progress.  Form  and  flexibility  of  the 
hand.  Mental  operations  the  spiritualizations  of  manual  op- 
erations.   Didactic  value  of  mechanical  labour. 

If  we  compare  the  latest  achievements  of  Western 
thought  with  the  results  of  Eastern  speculation,  we 
find  in  the  doctrine  of  evolution  a  striking  confirma- 

165 


166  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

tion  of  the  genetic  and  essential  unity  of  organic  nature, 
which  the  theory  of  metempsychosis  assumes.  Occi- 
dental science  has  firmly  established  what  Oriental 
metaphysics  only  vaguely  dreamed  of.  The  seemingly 
fantastic  and  extravagant  assertions  of  Indian  sages 
concerning  the  transmigrations  of  the  soul,  and  the 
countless  ages  of  its  successive  reincarnations  in  its 
upward  strivings  toward  the  goal  of  complete  emanci- 
pation from  material  existence,  are  but  lengthened 
foreshadowings  and  grotesque  adumbrations  of  the 
doctrine  of  natural  selection  and  progressive  develop- 
ment through  the  struggle  for  existence,  involving 
perpetual  adaptations  to  changes  of  environment  that 
have  been  going  on  for  millions  of  years,  and  produc- 
ing organisms  in  which  the  intellectual  faculty  frees 
itself  more  and  more  from  the  bondage  of  material  con- 
ditions, and  asserts  with  constantly  increasing  emphasis 
its  supremacy  over  mere  brute  force.* 

Modern  scientific  research  has  not  only  discovered 
a  multitude  of  physical  correspondences — analogical 
and  homological — between  man  and  brute — ^but  it  has 


*  Kapila,  the  founder  of  the  Sankhya  school  of  philosophy,  may 
thus  be  regarded,  in  a  certain  sense,  as  the  Indo- Aryan  prototype 
of  Darwin.  The  problems  which  they  endeavour  to  solve  are  much 
the  same,  and  their  methods  differ  only  as  the  poetic  and  mystic 
genius  of  the  Hindu  differs  from  the  positive  and  matter-of-fact 
genius  of  the  Englishman.  In  Kapila's  writings,  the  Sankhya 
Pravachana  Sutra  and  Sankhya  KarikS,  there  are  many  thoughts 
and  expressions  that  would  fit  admirably  into  the  Origin  of  Spe- 
cies. This  famous  muni  discarded  revelation  and  recognised  no 
other  final  cause  than  great  creating  nature  {muJaprakriti) ;  and 
his  philosophical  system  is  characterized  by  native  scholiasts  as 
nirisvarit,  usually  translated  "atheistic,"  but  really  signifying 
"  agnostic." 


MIND  IN  MAN  AND  BRUTE.  167 

also  detected  and  brought  to  light  many  irrefragable 
proofs  of  their  psychical  kinship.  The  more  exact  and 
extended  our  knowledge  of  animal  intelligence  be- 
comes, the  more  remarkable  does  its  resemblance  to 
human  intelligence  appear.  The  attempt  to  discrimi- 
nate between  them  by  referring  all  operations  of  the 
former  to  instinct  and  all  operations  of  the  latter  to 
reason  is  now  generally  abandoned.  Automatic  mental 
action  is  known  to  characterize  men  far  more,  and  the 
lower  animals  far  less,  than  psychologists  formerly  sup- 
posed. In  an  hypnotic  state  the  conscious  psychical 
activities  of  the  individual,  as  regards  the  exercise  of 
his  rational  and  volitional  powers,  are  almost  wholly 
suspended  and  superseded  by  automatic  movements  and 
alien  impulses  of  suggestion,  over  which  he  has  no 
control. 

Indeed,  there  is  strong  presumptive  evidence  that 
consciousness,  which  is  indicated  by  the  simplest  exer- 
cise of  choice,  and  may  be  regarded  as  the  distinctive 
peculiarity  and  fundamental  element  of  Mind,  mani- 
fests itself  in  the  lowest  forms  of  life,  and  is  present 
even  in  protoplasmic  and  protozoic  organisms.  From 
this  starting  point  the  process  of  development  is  grad- 
ual, but  continuous,  from  the  amoeba  to  man. 

No  psychologist  has  us  jet  been  able  to  draw  a  hard 
and  fast  line  between  volitional,  instinctive,  and  reflex 
actions,  or  to  determine  with  any  degree  of  precision 
what  activities  are  attributable  to  each.  It  is  highly 
probable  that  the  so-called  self-determinations  of  the 
will  are  as  mechanical  in  their  origin,  and  as  definitely 
fixed  in  their  operation  under  the  influence  of  motives 
of  various  kinds,  as  are  reflex  actions  under  the  influ- 
ence of  their  appropriate  stimuli.     If  we  could  trace 


1G8  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

all  the  complex  incitements  and  impulses  which  lead 
the  assassin  to  lift  his  arm  and  strike  the  fatal  Mow, 
we  should  doubtless  find  the  necessity  of  the  action 
as  absolute  and  inevitable  as  the  movement  by  which 
the  decapitated  frog  raises  its  leg  to  scratch  an  irritative 
drop  of  nitric  acid  from  its  side.  The  argument  in 
favour  of  human  freedom,  based  upon  an  appeal  to  con- 
sciousness, has  no  validity  whatever,  since  the  forces, 
of  which  the  act  of  willing  is  the  resultant,  lie  outside 
of  the  sphere  and  beyond  the  cognizance  of  conscious- 
ness. Back  of  the  mere  recognition  of  the  fact  that  an 
action  is  performed  in  obedience  to  the  will — ^and  this 
is  as  far  as  the  power  of  consciousness  extends  or  can 
claim  any  authority — is  the  profounder  and  more  mys- 
terious problem  of  the  origin  and  constitution  of  the 
will  itself,  of  which  consciousness  can  have  no  imme- 
diate knowledge  and  furnish  no  satisfactory  solution, 
/what  a  man  may  will  to  do,  when  acted  upon  by  cer- 
tain inducements  or  temptations,  was  prearranged  long 
before  his  birth,  not  by  the  arbitrary  decree  of  a  vin- 
dictive deity,  but  by  prenatal  influences  and  hereditary 
tendencies,  facts  of  organization  which  may  be  subse- 
quently modified  by  the  social  and  moral  environment 
into  which  he  is  born  and  the  effects  of  early  educa- 
tion. This  is  the  truth  which  is  symbolically  expressed 
by  the  dogma  of  predestination,  a  dodrina  Jiorrihilis, 
as  Calvin  himself  admitted  it  to  be,  that  loses  nothing  of 
this  awful  -  character  by  being  transferred  from  the 
province  of  theology  to  that  of  physiology. 

It  is  true  that  we  perceive  an  immense  disparity 
between  the  highest  human  and  the  lowest  animal  in- 
telligence; but,  in  both  cases,  the  manifestations  of 
mental  activity  are,  from  a  physiological  point  of  view, 


MIND  IN  MAN  AND  BRUTE.  169 

the  products  of  like  nervous  processes  and  molecular 
changes.  If  the  operations  of  mind  in  man  appear  to 
us  so  variable  as  to  be  incalculable,  and  to  render  it 
often  quite  impossible  to  predict  what  they  may  be  in 
any  particular  case,  this  uncertainty  is  due  to  our 
ignorance  of  all  the  factors  and  countless  impulses 
which  combine  to  produce  them.  In  this  respect,  a 
mental  resultant  does  not  differ  essentially  from  a  me- 
chanical resultant,  and  would  be  found  on  analysis  to 
be  the  exact  equivalent  of  all  the  motive  energies  which 
enter  into  its  composition.  But  these  energies  are  so 
manifold  in  their  complexity  and  so  mysterious  in  their 
workings  that  it  would  be  impossible  for  any  intelli- 
gence, not  endowed  with  omniscience,  to  detect  and 
determine  them.  The  fact  that  mental  actions  are  un- 
foreseeable is  therefore  no  proof  that  they  are  not  fixed 
and  inevitable.  Man  is  a  free  agent  when  he  acts  with- 
out constraint  upon  the  exercise  of  his  will;  but  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  free  agency,  if  this  term  is  used  as 
referring  to  the  origination  of  the  will  itsolf.  The  in- 
dividual is  conscious  of  acting  according  to  his  wishes; 
but  he  is  not,  and  never  can  be,  fully  conscious  of  the 
forces  which  cause  him  to  wish  one  thing  rather  than 
another,  since  these  are  often  prenatal  proclivities  and 
idiosyncrasies,  hereditary  peculiarities  of  temperament 
running  in  the  blood  and  remote  from  the  domain  of 
consciousness,  or  inbred  predispositions,  which  in  many 
cases  he  can  neither  know  nor  resist. 

An  appeal  to  consciousness  as  a  means  of  explaining 
the  real  nature  of  psychical  phenomena  is  as  superficial 
and  fallacious  as  an  appeal  to  the  senses  as  a  means 
of  explaining  the  real  nature  of  physical  phenomena. 
Whether  applied  to  the  microcosm  or  to  the  macro- 


170  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

cosm,  the  method  is  the  same,  and  the  inferences  are 
in  both  cases  equally  unsafe  and  delusive.  The  psy- 
chologist who  asserts  that  he  is  free,  because  he  feels 
himself  to  be  so,  is,  in  his  logical  processes  of  thought, 
a  survival  of  the  physicist  who  maintained  that  the 
earth  is  a  flat  and  stationary  body  round  which  the 
sun  revolves,  because  he  saw  it  to  be  so.  To  accept  such 
evidence  as  final  and  irreversible  is  as  fatal  to  the 
progress  of  psychology  to-day  as  it  was  for  many  centu- 
ries to  the  progress  of  astronomy. 

It  is  foreign  to  my  present  purpose  to  discuss  the 
question  of  human  freedom  or  human  necessity.  I  sim- 
ply desire  to  show  that  whatever  considerations  may 
be  adduced  in  favour  of  either  hypothesis  apply  alike 
to  man  and  to  the  lower  animals.  If  Descartes  declared 
brutes  to  be  mere  machines,  La  Mettrie  had  no  diffi- 
culty, by  following  the  same  line  of  reasoning,  in  push- 
ing his  argument  to  its  legitimate  conclusion,  and  prov- 
ing the  same  to  be  as  true  of  human  beings. 

In  plants,  too,  we  not  only  detect  rudiments  of  con- 
sciousness and  indications  of  something  like  volition, 
but  also  discover  traces  of  nervous  organization  mani- 
festing itself  in  sensitiveness  to  irritation.  Infusoria, 
polyps,  sea-anemones,  holothures,  and  other  radiates 
distinguish  between  edible  and  inedible,  or  palatable 
or  unpalatable  objects,  in  their  selection  of  food.  Their 
power  of  choice,  so  far  as  it  goes,  does  not  differ  in  the 
manner  of  its  exercise  from  that  of  the  most  fastidious 
gourmand.  The  sea  pudding  is,  in  this  respect,  the 
peer  of  the  daintiest  diner-out  that  ever  stretched  his 
elegant  legs  under  the  mahogany. 

The  eminent  zoopsychologist,  Wilhelm  Wundt,  af- 
firms, as  one  of  the  points  which  modern  science  has 


MIND  IN  MAN  AND  BRUTE.  171 

settled  beyond  a  peradventure,  the  fact  that  the  faculty 
of  perception  in  the  lower  animals  differs  from  that  of 
man  only  in  degree.  He  discovers  between  man  and 
brute  no  broader  and  deeper  chasm  than  between  brutes 
themselves.  All  animated  organisms  form  a  chain  of 
homogeneous  beings,  which  are  firmly  linked  together, 
and  in  which  there  is  no  break.  Even  the  immense 
intellectual  changes  which  man  has  undergone,  corre- 
sponding to  the  growth  of  his  brain  in  size  and  struc- 
tural complexity,  are  the  results  of  gradual  develop- 
ment, and  not  due,  in  any  sense,  to  a  new  departure. 
An  obsolete  psychology,  with  its  arbitrary  divisions 
of  the  mental  faculties  into  many  categories,  has  always 
been  fond  of  drawing  fanciful  lines  of  demarcation 
between  them;  but  now  that  we  have  come  to  recog- 
nise all  spiritual  life  as  a  continuous  whole,  we  must 
accept  every  living  thing  as  a  constituent  part  of  this 
great  whole.  Drawing  conclusions  and  forming  judg- 
ments are  elementary  psychical  processes,  and  belong 
to  the  very  earliest  stages  of  conscious  life  as  the  factors 
of  the  highest  intellectual  powers. 

Descending  still  lower  in  the  scale  of  animate  and 
organic  existence,  we  find  that  the  closest  microscopic 
observation,  with  the  help  of  the  most  powerful  mag- 
nifying lenses,  has  not  yet  enabled  the  naturalist  to 
establish  a  clear  and  precise  boundary  line  between  the 
animal  and  vegetable  kingdoms,  or  to  set  up  a  criterion 
for  determining  with  any  degree  of  certainty  what 
organisms  belong  to  each.  This  difficulty  has  led  to 
the  recognition  of  a  third  group  of  organisms,  or  vital 
substances,  called  protista,  which  are  neither  animals 
nor  plants,  but  form,  as  it  were,  the  homogeneous  and 
protoplasmic  material  out  of  which  both  are  evolved. 


172  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

But  even  here  the  Hnes  of  separation  between  protista 
and  plants,  on  the  one  hand,  and  animals,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  by  no  means  distinct  and  well  defined,  prov- 
ing how  gradually  and  imperceptibly  the  realms  of  Na- 
ture, as  we  call  them,  all  merge  into  each  other,  and 
have  really  no  existence  except  as  modes  of  thinking  in 
the  mind  of  man. 

These  most  primogenial  of  all  creatures,  the  protista, 
although  apparently  mere  clots  of  albumen  without 
organs  of  sense  or  any  sort  of  nervous  system,  are  not 
only  perceptibly  affected  by  light,  but  are  also  attracted 
by  different  substances,  selecting  those  which  they  prefer 
for  nutriment,  and  showing  remarkable  activity  and 
even  considerable  energy  and  ingenuity  in  procuring 
their  food. 

There  are  organisms  which  begin  their  life  as  plants 
and  finally  develop  into  animals;  and  there  are  others 
which  undergo  a  reverse  transformation  from  animals 
into  plants,  being  at  first  endowed  with  locomotion, 
and  afterward  becoming  stationary  and  taking  root. 
Infusoria  are  thus  metamorphosed  into  algce. 

How  a  structureless  mass  of  matter  becomes  endowed 
with  sensation  and  the  power  of  propagation,  and  is 
thus  changed  from  a  chemical  compound  into  a  living 
creature,  is  a  mystery  which  neither  the  dogma  of  divine 
creation  nor  the  doctrine  of  spontaneous  generation 
suffices  to  clear  up  and  make  perfectly  comprehensible. 
Only  analogy  can  throw  any  light  upon  the  genesis 
and  evolution  of  organic  life.  We  know  that  environ- 
ing infiuences  induce  inorganic  or  amorphous  sub- 
stances to  crystallize:  why  may  not  favouring  influ- 
ences also  vitalize  them?  We  observe  that  changes 
of  environment  cause  many  species  of  animals  and 


MIND  IN  MAN  AND  BRUTE.  173 

plants  to  thrive,  to  decline,  and  even  to  become  ex- 
tinct: why  may  not  environment,  heat,  light,  moisture, 
and  other  propitious  conditions  have  originated  the 
first  germs  of  life?  If  living  beings  were  produced 
arbitrarily  by  a  creative  fiat,  there  is  no  reason  why  they 
should  ever  undergo  transformations  of  any  kind  in 
consequence  of  changes  in  their  external  conditions, 
or  should  ever  die  out  except  in  obedience  to  a  de- 
structive fiat.  The  fact  that  they  do  suffer  variations 
and  become  extinct  and  are  superseded  by  other  organ- 
isms, as  the  result  of  a  change  of  environment,  would 
naturally  suggest  that  they  began  their  existence  as 
products  of  environment;  in  other  words,  that  they 
spontaneously  appeared  when  the  proper  originary  con- 
ditions were  realized.  It  is  also  in  accordance  with 
the  theory  of  the  spontaneous  generation  of  organic 
life  that  there  should  be  no  break  in  the  continuity  of 
its  development  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest  forms. 

Given  a  piece  of  protoplasm,  and  science  is  com- 
petent to  derive  from  it  all  living  organisms  from  the 
monad  to  man.  The  problem  now  presented  to  the 
biologist  for  solution  is  the  production  of  protoplasm, 
or  the  discovery  of  the  circumstances  and  conditions 
under  which  a  chemical  compound  becomes  sensitive 
and  reproductive. 

We  have  already  seen  that  amorphous  matter,  when 
acted  upon  by  certain  forces — such  as  light,  heat,  cold, 
or  sudden  movement — becomes  crystalline,  and  that 
these  crystals  have  the  power  of  reproducing  them- 
selves. Water,  if  perfectly  at  rest,  may  be  reduced  to 
a  temperature  below  the  freezing-point,  and  still  remain 
fluid;  but  the  slightest  jar  will  crystallize  it  into  ice. 
This  phenomenon  of  crystallogenic  attraction  is  a  mys- 


174  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

tery,  but,  nevertheless,  a  well-recognised  fact.  Again, 
if  a  crystal  is  brought  into  contact  with  amorphous 
matter  under  proper  conditions,  it  propagates  itself, 
converting  the  mass  into  crystals  after  its  kind.  The 
physicist  understands  the  nature  and  process  of  crystal- 
lization as  little  as  the  biologist  does  the  nature  and 
process  of  primitive  germination.  If  the  conditions 
are  present  in  the  one  case,  the  crystal  appears;  and, 
if  the  conditions  are  present  in  the  other  case,  the  germ 
appears.  This  is  all  that  can  be  said  about  it.  But  the 
inexplicability  of  either  process  can  not  be  urged  as 
an  argument  against  its  actuality. 

That  a  plant  or  an  animal  may  assimilate  elements 
from  the  water,  earth,  and  air,  and  use  them  to  build 
up  its  own  peculiar  cell-structure,  is  neither  more  nor 
less  intelligible  than  that  a  crystal,  when  placed  in  a 
proper  solution,  should  change  it  into  crystalline  struc- 
ture similar  to  its  own.  The  gradual  development  of 
a  living  organism  out  of  undifferentiated  plasma  in 
response  to  appropriate  stimuli,  such  as  heat,  light, 
moisture,  and  electrical  energy,  is  as  easily  conceivable 
as  that  two  gases,  hydrogen  and  oxygen,  should  com- 
bine in  the  form  of  water,  which  again,  under  the 
action  of  heat,  vaporizes  and  disappears  as  steam. 

In  1827  the  Swedish  chemist  Berzelius  declared  that 
*^we  shall  never  be  able  to  make  in  the  laboratory 
any  of  the  products  of  vital  forces.^'  Shortly  after- 
ward his  pupil,  Wohler,  disproved  this  so  positive  as- 
sertion by  the  chemical  production  of  urea;  and  since 
that  time  quite  a  number  of  the  products  of  vital  force, 
such  as  indigo,  salicine,  and  alizarine,  have  been  fabri- 
cated chemically,  and  sometimes  in  so  great  quantities 
and  with  so  little  expense  as  almost  wholly  to  super- 


MIND  IN  MAN  AND  BRUTE.  175 

sede  the  natural  products  as  articles  of  commerce.  The 
synthetic  chemist  can  even  produce  some  of  the  crystals 
(quartz,  rubies,  spinels,  and  simili  distinguishable  from 
real  diamonds  only  by  experts)  which  in  Nature's  labora- 
tory it  took  ages  to  form  and  to  endow  with  their  pecul- 
iar structure  and  marvellous  beauty.  These  facts  show 
the  progress  which  science  has  made  during  the  last 
half  century  in  discovering  the  secrets  of  Nature  and 
in  imitating  her  mysterious  processes;  and  there  is  no 
apparent  reason  why  the  creation  of  the  products  of 
vital  force  should  not  be  followed  by  the  production 
of  vital  force  itself,  and  the  artificial  genesis  of  the 
germs  of  life. 

Not  only  are  the  physical  antecedents  of  psychical 
phenomena,  but  also  the  impulses  and  adjustive  move- 
ments resulting  in  mental  activity,  the  same  in  the 
lower  animals  and  in  man.  Perhaps  the  most  com- 
prehensive classification  of  these  impulses  is  that  given 
by  Dr.  G.  H.  Schneider  (Der  thierische  Wille,  Leipzig, 
1880),  who  distributes  them  into  four  caiegories:  im- 
pulses of  sensation  (Empfindungstriehe),  impulses  of  per- 
ception (Wahrnehmungstriebe),  impulses  of  conception 
(Vorstellungstriebe)^  and  impulses  of  thought  {Gedanhen- 
triebe),  or  ideation. 

Back  of  them  all,  however,  lies  the  great  original 
source  and  efiicient  cause  of  organic  activity  and  in- 
tellectual life  in  its  multiform  manifestations;  namely, 
the  nutritive  impulse  {Ern'dhrungstrieb),  or  the  craving 
for  food.  Every  expression  of  feeling,  every  exercise 
of  the  will,  every  exhibition  of  intelligence  in  the  lower 
animals  and  in  man,  can  be  traced  to  hunger  as  its 
fountain-head.  From  the  pressure  of  hunger  and  the 
desire  to  prevent  its  recurrence  spring  the  love  of  ac- 


176  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOaY. 

quisition,  the  systematic  accumulation  of  wealth,  the 
idea  of  ownership  in  things,  or  the  general  conception 
of  personal  property,  which  is  the  strongest  cement 
of  social  and  domestic  life,  codes  of  laws  and  systems 
of  morals,  discoveries,  inventions,  industrial  and  com- 
mercial enterprises,  scientific  researches,  and  the  high- 
est achievements  of  culture  and  civilization. 

It  is  true  that,  as  a  man  rises  in  the  scale  of  intelli- 
gence, other  and  nobler  incentives  to  activity  come 
into  operation  and  act  even  more  powerfully  than  the 
primal  nutritive  impulse.  The  latter,  however,  always 
asserts  and  insists  upon  the  priority  of  its  claims;  and 
not  until  these  have  been  satisfied  and  the  stress  of 
hunger  relieved,  and  in  some  degree  permanently 
guarded  against,  does  the  individual  think  of  devot- 
ing his  energies  to  higher  pursuits.  Spinoza  had  to 
secure  his  subsistence  by  grinding  his  stent  of  lenses 
before  he  could  gratify  his  love  of  philosophy  and  find 
leisure  to  work  out  the  ethical  and  metaphysical  prob- 
lems in  the  solution  of  which  all  his  intellectual  powers 
were  engaged.  It  was  the  chief  grievance  of  Xantippe 
that  her  husband  would  waste  his  time  in  getting  up, 
according  to  what  has  since  been  known  as  the  Socratic 
method,  unprofitable  "  corners "  in  speculative  ques- 
tions which  brought  in  no  pecuniary  returns,  and 
neither  kept  the  pot  boiling  nor  contributed  to  the  ali- 
mentary worth  of  its  contents.  Still,  it  is  highly  prob- 
able that  the  nutritive  impulse  would  have  been  stronger 
in  the  Grecian  sage  if  he  had  been  thrown  upon  his 
own  resources  for  subsistence,  and  had  not  relied  upon 
the  sufficient  persistency  of  this  natural  instinct  in  his 
spirited  spouse  to  supply  the  wants  of  a  modest  Athe- 
nian household. 


MIND  IN  MAN  AND  BRUTE.  1^7 

Parallels  to  this  feature  of  the  conjugal  life  of  Soc- 
rates are  found  in  many  a  New  England  village  of 
to-day,  where  we  see  the  exuberant  practical  energy  of 
the  wife  repressing  the  easy-going,  wool-gathering  hus- 
band, and  reducing  him  first  to  a  domestic  nullity,  and 
finally  to  a  confirmed  loafer  and  peripatetic  philosopher, 
sententious  and  seedy,  wise  and  worthless,  loved  and 
laughed  at  by  all  men. 

The  final  purpose  of  the  nutritive  impulse  and  of 
the  various  subsidiary  impulses  which  minister  to  it 
is  the  preservation  of  the  species.  Seeking  food,  fight- 
ing foes,  forming  friendships,  sexual  attraction,  care 
of  offspring,  social  feeling,  love,  hatred,  fear.  Jealousy, 
cruelty,  kindness,  revenge,  deceit,  "all  thoughts,  all 
passions,  all  delights,"  are  subservient  to  this  one 
great  end. 

Not  only  is  the  preservation  of  the  species  the  aim 
of  all  the  energies  developed  by  animal  organisms  in 
their  present  state  of  being,  but  it  is  also  the  genesis 
of  the  belief  in  a  life  to  come.  The  doctrine  of  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul  springs  from  man's  unwillingness 
to  give  up  the  struggle  for  existence,  even  after  the 
dissolution  of  his  physical  frame.  It  is  the  expression 
of  his  antipathy  to  annihilation  and  his  longing  to  live 
and  to  develop  to  a  still  higher  degree  his  spiritual 
powers.  The  soul  is  the  ideal  of  individuality  in  its 
purest  form,  just  as  the  gods  of  a  people  are  its  ideals 
of  humanity  in  its  purest  form,  although  it  may  be, 
as  Dr.  Svoboda  remarks,  that  "a  soul  which  no  one 
remembers  is  as  devoid  of  reality  as  a  god  which  no  one 
worships."  ^ 

Impulses  of  sensation  are  produced  by  immediate 
contact  of  the  living  organism  with  external  objects; 


178  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

impulses  of  perception  are  called  forth  by  seeing  ob- 
jects at  a  greater  or  less  distance;  impulses  of  con- 
ception originate  in  the  presentation  of  real  but  absent 
objects  to  the  mind  by  the  power  of  memory;  impulses 
of  thought  may  arise  out  of  the  mere  imagination  of 
objects  or  the  simple  apprehension  of  things  not  actually 
existing.  There  is,  however,  no  break  in  this  series 
of  cognitive  movements,  from  the  most  automatic  re- 
flex action  to  the  most  complex  processes  of  abstraction 
and  generalization;  nor  is  it  possible  to  determine  how 
far  they  are  due  to  mental  and  to  non-mental  factors, 
or  to  draw  a  boundary  line  defining  the  limits  of  each. 
We  know  that  thought  and  emotion  are  always  con- 
nected with  certain  molecular  movements  in  the  brain. 
Whether  the  cerebral  movements  are  the  cause  or  mere- 
ly the  concomitants  of  the  mental  manifestations  we 
can  not  tell.  All  that  we  can  assert  is  that,  within 
the  limits  of  our  experience,  the  latter  are  inseparable 
from  the  former,  and  wholly  dependent  upon  them. 

In  the  lower  animals  the  lower  impulses  are  pre- 
dominant, and  this  predominance  is  used  by  Schneider, 
in  a  general  way,  as  the  basis  of  psychological  classifi- 
cation. Thus  he  regards  protozoa  and  radiates  as  sen- 
sation animals;  the  mollusks  and  articulates  as  per- 
ception animals;  the  vertebrates,  with  exception  of 
the  human  species,  as  conception  animals;  and  man 
as  pre-eminently  a  thought  animal.  Nevertheless,  it 
is  to  be  observed  that  man  acts  in  obedience  to  all 
these  impulses,  and  that  the  lower  animals,  which 
are  usually  governed  by  impulses  of  sensation,  percep- 
tion, or  conception,  may  and  do  exercise  thought,  and 
are  influenced  by  imagination  and  reason. 

Oken  regarded  the  life  of  the  lower  animals  as  a  sort 


MIND  IN  MAN  AND  BRUTE.  179 

of  mesmeric  state,  due  to  the  ascendency  of  the  sleeping 
soul  located  in  the  liver  over  the  waking  soul  with  its 
seat  in  the  brain,  and  classified  them  according  to 
their  supposed  temperaments  into  melancholy,  sanguine, 
and  choleric.  The  first  class  comprises  fishes  and  rep- 
tiles; the  second,  birds;  and  the  third,  mammals.  Ani- 
mals of  the  first  class  have  memory  and  sensation  only; 
those  of  the  second  class  have  perception,  conception, 
and  concrete  ideas;  those  of  the  third  class  have  under- 
standing, intelligence,  and  reason,  but  not  self-con- 
sciousness, which  is  the  sole  attribute  of  man.  This 
classification,  although  superficially  suggestive  of  that 
proposed  by  Schneider,  is  loose  and  unscientific;  and, 
instead  of  being  based  upon  accurate  observation,  it 
is  made  to  suit  certain  mystical  notions  and  metaphys- 
ical theories. 

Children,  savages,  and  the  rude  and  ignorant  classes 
of  civilized  society  yield  more  readily  than  highly  devel- 
oped races  and  individuals  to  the  lower  impulses  of  sen- 
sation and  perception,  as  is  evident  from  :heir  lack  of 
self-restraint  when  excited  by  the  presence  of  desirable 
objects,  and  their  disposition  to  gratify  their  appetites 
without  thought  of  the  future. 

Schneider  maintains  that  squirrels,  hamsters,  and 
woodchucks,  in  collecting  and  storing  food,  act  solely 
in  obedience  to  the  impulses  of  perception  and  concep- 
tion. Thus  the  perception  of  a  nut  causes  them  to 
pick  it  up;  the  conception  of  their  hole  or  burrow  im- 
pels them  to  carry  off  the  nut;  and,  when  they  have 
reached  their  abode,  the  perception  of  the  place  induces 
them  to  lay  it  down  or  store  it.  Such  an  explanation, 
however,  really  explains  nothing,  and  is  wholly  inade- 
quate to  account  for  the  animal's  conduct.     It  does 


180  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

not  furnish  any  sufficient  motive  for  the  action,  and 
therefore  leaves  it  as  unintelligible  as  it  was  before. 
If  these  creatures  exercise  no  foresight,  and  have  no 
notion  that  the  nut  is  to  serve  them  as  food  in  the  com- 
ing winter,  they  would,  if  hungry,  eat  it  at  once;  if 
not  hungry,  they  would  let  it  alone;  they  surely  would 
not  store  it  for  future  use.  No  squirrel  is  tempted  by 
a  fair  exterior  to  tr}^  his  teeth  on  a  hollow  nut,  or  to 
add  worthless  material  of  this  sort  to  his  winter  supply 
of  provisions.  But,  if  he  were  governed  solely  by  the 
aforesaid  impulses,  he  would  not  be  capable  of  such 
discrimination.  The  mental  process  which  leads  him 
to  discard  every  nut  that  has  not  a  sound  kernel  in  it 
is  not  confined  to  a  simple  impulse  of  perception.  The 
fact,  too,  that  he  does  not  merely  pick  up  the  nuts 
which  he  happens  to  find  in  his  wanderings,  but  sets 
out  in  search  of  them,  proves  that  the  action  is  due 
to  the  exercise  of  thought,  and  that  the  agent  is  clearly 
conscious  of  the  purpose  for  which  it  is  performed. 

The  propensity  of  the  carrion  fly,  on  the  other  hand, 
to  lay  its  eggs  in  putrefying  flesh,  which  will  supply 
its  young  with  proper  nourishment,  is  stimulated  and 
directed  wholly  by  the  impulse  of  perception,  and  espe- 
cially by  the  sense  of  smell,  since  it  often  lays  its  eggs 
on  plants  which  have  the  odour  of  carrion,  but  not  its 
nutritive  qualities,  so  that  the  young  perish  from  lack 
of  food  as  soon  as  they  are  hatched.  Again,  the 
tumblebug,  on  perceiving  a  small,  round  object,  is 
seized  with  an  irresistible  impulse  to  roll  it,  although 
it  may  be  a  piece  of  wood  or  stone  instead  of  a  ball 
of  dung  containing  its  eggs.  But  this  sort  of  fatuity 
is,  unfortunately,  not  confined  to  tumblebugs.  One 
meets  with  many  persons  in  daily  life  who  are  easily 


MIND  IN  MAN  AND  BRUTE.  181 

deceived  by  outward  semblances,  think  they  know  a 
round  and  Tollable  thing  when  they  see  it,  and  are  con- 
stantly engaging  in  all  sorts  of  foolish  and  unfruitful 
enterprises.  In  forming  ties  of  friendship,  love,  and 
matrimony,  and  in  entering  into  a  great  variety  of 
social  relations,  young  people  are  especially  apt  to  be 
led  by  mere  impulses  of  perception  and  conception, 
so-called  fancies,  which  are  often  blind  and  irrational 
whimseys  of  the  most  delusive  and  pernicious  char- 
acter. 

When  a  fox  sees  the  bait  of  a  trap,  there  are  two 
distinct  impulses  immediately  excited  in  Eeynard's 
breast — the  impulse  due  to  perception,  which  tempts 
him  to  seize  the  tempting  morsel,  and  the  impulse  due 
to  conception,  which  suggests  the  danger  of  being 
caught;  and  his  safety  depends  upon  the  comparative 
strength  of  these  two  impulses.  Under  such  circum- 
stances, a  young  animal  will  probably  yield  to  the 
perception  impulse,  and  fall  into  the  snare:  whereas 
an  older  and  wilier  fox  will  most  likely  be  governed 
by  the  conception  impulse,  whereby  the  sense  of  peril 
overrules  the  strength  of  appetite,  and  will  thus  escape. 

Feigning  death  in  the  presence  of  danger  implies 
not  only  a  clear  conception  of  the  impending  peril, 
but  also  a  remarkable  d>^gree  of  cunning  and  self-con- 
trol in  evading  it.  The  theory  of  Prof.  Preyer  that 
this  simulation  is  simply  a  state  of  catalepsy  produced 
by  the  paralyzing  effects  of  fear  is  wholly  inadmissible, 
and  will  never  be  accepted  by  any  one  who  has  seen 
an  opossum  "playing  'possum^'  or  read  Audubon's 
vivid  description  of  such  a  performance.  No  disciple 
of  George  Pox  ever  developed  the  power  of  passive  re- 
sistance   possessed    by    the    opossum.       The    female 


182  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

didelphys  is  a  heroic  mother,  and  will  calmly  suffer 
martyrdom  for  the  safety  of  her  offspring.  She  can 
open  at  will  the  pouch  in  which  she  keeps  her  young, 
but  no  amount  of  torture  can  force  her  to  do  so.  To 
get  them  out  is  as  difficult  as  to  get  a  joke  into  a 
Scotchman's  head,  and  can  be  effected  only  by  the  same 
means — a  surgical  operation.  Hypocrisy  (that  is, 
"  acting '')  is  a  trait  shown  by  all  weak  animals  in  self- 
defence.  Dogs  are  adepts  in  putting  on  an  air  of  inno- 
cence when  they  are  fully  sensible  of  having  done 
wrong,  and  in  craving  pardon  by  expressions  of  mingled 
contrition  and  flattery  when  their  guilt  has  been  de- 
tected and  exposed. 

Birds  and  mammals,  which  live  in  flocks  and  herds, 
post  sentinels,  when  they  are  feeding  or  sleeping  or  en- 
gaged in  any  perilous  enterprise,  in  order  to  warn  the 
community  of  the  approach  of  an  enemy.  Flamingoes, 
wild  geese,  turkeys,  gulls,  bustards,  crows,  ravens,  storks, 
prairie  hens  and  prairie  dogs,  monkeys,  zebras,  wild 
horses,  chamois,  beavers,  otters,  walruses — ^in  short,  all 
gregarious  animals — have  this  habit.  The  sentinels  also 
show  great  discrimination  in  the  discharge  of  their  duty, 
paying  no  heed  to  harmless  animals  like  a  sheep  or  a 
cow,  but  sounding  an  alarm  at  the  approach  of  a  beast 
of  prey  or  a  man.  Before  migrating  to  any  particular 
place,  spies  are  sent  out  to  ascertain  whether  the  change 
would  be  desirable  or  attended  with  danger.  In  Siberia 
deputations  of  squirrels  go  on  such  missions,  usually 
in  August,  crossing  dreary  wastes,  swimming  rivers, 
and  enduring  all  sorts  of  hardships  until  they  reach 
the  high  plateaus  of  the  pine  forests.  In  a  few  weeks 
they  return,  report  on  the  prospects  of  the  cone  harvest, 
and  toward  the  end  of  September  guide  the  whole  squir- 


MIND  IN  MAN  AND  BEUTE.  183 

rel  community  ta  the  most  favourable  spot.  The  zeal 
of  these  emissaries  in  the  performance  of  their  task 
is  shown  by  the  bruised  and  blistered  condition  of  their 
feet;  and  they  appreciate  the  importance  of  their  office 
as  fully  as  did  the  men  whom  Moses  sent  to  spy  out  the 
land  of  Canaan. 

It  is  also  a  curious  fact  that  snipes,  stilts,  and  other 
birds  which  frequent  the  river  banks  and  the  seashore 
do  not  keep  sentry  themselves,  but  rely  for  security  on 
the  vigilance  of  the  plover,  which  is  quick  to  signal 
any  danger.  For  the  same  reason  zebras  are  fond  of 
feeding  near  ostriches,  where  they  are  free  from  all 
anxiety,  knowing  that  the  ostriches  are  always  on  the 
alert  and  quick  to  scent  the  slightest  suspicion  of  an 
approaching  foe. 

That  these  actions  are  performed  with  a  full  con- 
sciousness of  the  object  to  be  attained  is  undeniable, 
and  can  be  explained  on  no  other  theory.  Stationing 
sentinels  indicates  not  only  a  high  degree  of  foresight 
and  forethought,  but  also  gives  evidence  of  remarkable 
moral  qualities,  as  the  expression  of  individual  self- 
sacrifice  for  the  common  good,  or  what  in  human  so- 
cieties would  be  called  public  spirit  or  patriotic  senti- 
ment. Sentinels  and  spies  expose  their  lives  for  the 
safety  of  the  flock  or  herd.  It  makes  no  difference 
whether  they  undertake  this  service  voluntarily  or  are 
compelled  to  perform  it:  the  existence  of  such  an  office 
marks  a  high  development  of  the  moral  sense  in  the 
perception  of  the  obligations  of  the  individual  to  the 
community  of  which  he  is  a  member. 

Even  cold-blooded  sea  creatures  know  how  to  profit 
by  associations  of  this  kind.  Little  sea  crabs  seek  pro- 
tection in  the  vicinity  of  the  polyp  from  their  arch- 


184  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

enemy,  the  squid.  In  like  manner  the  pilot  fish  is  safe 
from  the  attacks  of  the  tunny  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  the  shark.  Here  it  is  self-preservation,  and  not 
friendship,  that  forms  the  bond  of  association.  It  is  the 
same  with  finches  and  sparrows,  which  take  refuge  from 
falcons  in  the  eyries  of  eagles.  In  such  cases,  the  weaker 
animal  is  protected  by  the  mere  presence  of  the  stronger, 
but  there  is  no  evidence  that  the  latter  derives  any  ad- 
vantage from  the  companionship. 

Usually,  however,  the  relation  is  one  of  mutual  bene- 
fit, as,  for  example,  in  what  might  be  called  the  love 
of  the  hermit  crab  for  the  sea  anemone.  The  hermit 
crab  takes  up  its  abode  in  the  abandoned  shell  of  a 
mollusk  to  which  a  sea  anemone  is  attached.  If  it  wishes 
to  change  its  habitation,  it  takes  the  sea  anemone  with 
it;  or,  if  it  finds  a  suitable  shell  without  a  sea  anemone, 
it  goes  in  search  of  this  companion,  who  both  adorns 
and  protects  its  home — adorning  it  like  a  flower  of  rosy 
hue,  and  protecting  it  with  its  mesenteric  filaments 
that  sting  whatever  they  touch,  and  thus  ward  off  the 
assaults  of  fish  which  would  otherwise  drag  the  hermit 
crab  from  its  shell  and  devour  it.  In  return  for  this 
kindness  the  hermit  crab  provides  the  sea  anemone  with 
food.  In  this  union  each  seeks  its  self-interest  and 
secures  its  highest  good. 

A  queer  kind  of  fish  is  the  stargazer,  or  uranoscope, 
so  called  because  its  eyes  are  on  the  top  of  its  head  and 
are  therefore  always  looking  heavenward.  On  account 
of  this  sanctimonious  look  it  is  also  known  as  the  "  sea 
parson."  This  fish,  which  Hippocrates  prized  as  whole- 
some food,  probably  because  its  flesh  is  especially  offen- 
sive, and  Konrad  Gessner  more  than  two  centuries  ago 
characterized  as  "very  dreary  and  dreadful  to  look 


MIND  IN  MAN  AND  BRUTE.  185 

■upon,"  lives  for  the  most  part  buried  in  the  mire  or 
sand,  with  nothing  visible  but  its  staring  eyes  and  ver- 
tical mouth,  from  which  projects  a  long,  cylindrical, 
cartilaginous  flap  that  wriggles  like  a  worm.  No  sooner 
does  one  of  the  fry  of  little  fish  that  gather  round  this 
supposed  worm  bite  at  it  than  it  is  seized  by  the  treach- 
erous flap,  and  disappears  in  the  pitlike  mouth  of  the 
hidden  stargazer. 

Now,  as  to  the  mental  process  here  involved,  Schnei- 
der maintains  that  the  stargazer  buries  itself  in  the 
slime  in  obedience  to  an  impulse  of  perception,  stretches 
out  its  squirming  flap  in  obedience  to  an  impulse  of 
conception  (i.  e.,  of  its  prey),  and  draws  it  in  again  with 
the  captured  minnow  in  obedience  to  an  impulse  of 
sensation,  but  that  it  has  no  consciousness  of  the  pur- 
pose for  which  it  performs  all  these  actions.  The  natu- 
ralist deems  himself  justified  in  this  summary  treat- 
ment of  the  psychology  of  the  subject,  simply  because 
he  is  dealing  with  a  creature  of  low  organization,  and 
is  unwilling  to  admit  that  its  thoughts  ^an  be  as  his 
thoughts,  even  when  there  is  a  striking  resemblance 
in  their  external  acts.  The  most  accomplished  angler 
that  ever  whipped  a  stream  obeys  a  mere  impulse  of 
sensation  when  he  hooks  his  fish,  although  he  may  exer- 
cise his  reason  in  resisting  th^s  impulse,  and  not  respond 
to  every  nibble  at  the  bait  as  an  inexperienced  fisher 
would  do.  For  aught  we  know,  the  stargazer  may  use 
the  same  discretion.  Eeptiles,  birds,  and  mammals  of 
many  kinds,  toads,  scorpions,  crocodiles,  herons,  crakes, 
dogs,  cats,  lions,  tigers,  and  human  beings  lie  in  wait 
for  their  prey.  The  man  is  well  aware  of  the  purpose 
for  which  he  lurks  in  ambush,  and  the  same  is  true  of  the 
tiger  and  the  cat.    Indeed,  all  the  way  down  in  the  scale 


186  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

of  predatory  animals,  from  the  savage  to  the  sea  devil 
and  the  stargazer,  there  is  no  point  at  which  the  action 
ceases  to  be  conscious  and  rational,  and  becomes  purely 
sensational  and  automatic.  In  the  higher  organisms 
the  higher  faculties  predominate,  and  in  the  lower 
organisms  the  lower  faculties;  but  in  all  of  them,  from 
the  highest  to  the  lowest,  the  action  is  the  resultant 
of  impulses  of  sensation,  perception,  conception,  and 
thought  variously  combined  and  inextricably  blended. 

A  typical  illustration  of  the  illogical  inferences 
drawn  by  psychologists  as  to  the  mental  powers  of  the 
lower  animals  is  furnished  by  an  interesting  experiment 
made  by  Mr.  Amtsberg,  of  Stralsund,  and  reported  by 
Dr.  Mobius  to  the  Society  of  Natural  Science  for  Schles- 
wig-Holstein,  in  1873.  A  large  pike,  which  was  wont  to 
devour  the  small  fish  in  an  aquarium,  was  finally  sepa- 
rated from  them  by  a  plate  of  glass,  so  that,  whenever 
he  attempted  to  seize  his  prey,  he  struck  his  snout  so 
violently  against  the  transparent  barrier  as  to  be  quite 
stunned  by  the  blow.  Nevertheless,  he  kept  up  these 
attacks  for  some  time.  At  length,  however,  they  be- 
came rarer,  and  finally,  after  three  months  of  dis- 
heartening effort,  ceased  altogether.  After  the  lapse 
of  six  months  the  glass  plate  was  removed,  and  the  pike 
swam  about  freely  among  the  other  fish  without  at- 
tempting to  eat  them.  But  no  sooner  was  a  strange 
fish  put  into  the  aquarium  than  he  gobbled  it  up. 

In  the  opinion  of  Dr.  Mobius  and  other  scholars 
who  have  accepted  his  interpretation  of  the  phenomena, 
the  conduct  of  the  pike  "  was  not  based  on  judgment," 
but  was  the  result  merely  of  "the  establishment  of  a 
certain  direction  of  the  will  in  consequence  of  a  series 
of  uniformly  recurring  sensuous  impressions."    But  this 


MIND  IN    MAN  AND  BRUTE.  187 

holds  true  of  all  discipline,  and  is  precisely  the  process 
by  which  the  judgments  of  children,  and  indeed  of  the 
great  majority  of  adults,  are  formed.  There  are  hosts  of 
persons  who  go  through  life  constantly  bumping  their 
heads  against  invisible  walls  and  learning  wisdom — if 
they  learn  it  at  all — only  by  hard  knocks.  Very  many 
lack  even  the  perception  shown  by  the  pike,  and  do  not 
know  when  a  spiritual  barrier  has  been  taken  away 
and  the  sphere  of  their  intellectual  activity  enlarged, 
but  continue  to  move  along  the  line  of  the  old  partition 
wall,  and  never  dare  to  go  beyond  it. 

In  the  case  of  the  pike,  the  glass  plate  was  simply 
the  means  of  inculcating  a  definite  idea;  namely,  that 
certain  fish  were  not  to  be  eaten.  Every  blow  against 
the  unseen  barrier  was  an  admonition  and  injunction  on 
this  point,  and  a  vigorous  enforcement  of  the  lesson 
to  be  taught,  just  as  a  wilful  child  learns  to  let  forbid- 
den things  alone  by  a  smart  slap  on  the  fingers.  To 
afiirm  that  "  the  pike  acted  without  reflection,"  or  that 
it  was  "a  machine  with  a  soul,  which  hgs  this  advan- 
tage over  soulless  machines,  that  it  can  adapt  itself 
to  unforeseen  circumstances,"  and  that  "the  plate  of 
glass  was  to  the  organism  of  the  pike  one  of  these  un- 
foreseen circumstances,"  is  to  make  a  terrible  pother  of 
words  without  sense,  and  to  give  an  explanation  that 
explains  nothing.  A  machine  with  a  soul  is  a  contra- 
diction in  terms,  since  an  organism  with  a  soul  ceases 
by  virtue  of  this  endowment  to  be  a  machine. 

Nor  was  it  a  "  mark  of  stupidity  "  that  the  pike  did 
not  eat  the  fish  after  the  plate  of  glass  had  been  re- 
moved, but  rather  an  indication  of  docility  and  dis- 
crimination. The  ability  to  distinguish  between  the 
fish  that  were  not  to  be  eaten  and  those  that  might  be 
13 


188  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

eaten  shows  close  observation  and  the  power  of  com- 
paring objects  and  discerning  their  relations  and  proper- 
ties; and  what  is  this  but  judgment?  A  certain  associa- 
tion of  ideas  was  established  in  the  pike's  mind  by  the 
intervening  plate  of  glass,  just  as  it  may  be  established 
in  a  child's  mind  by  an  intervening  slap.  The  law  of 
mental  action  is  in  both  cases  identical.  In  the  in- 
stance adduced,  it  required  months  of  discipline  to  estab- 
lish this  association  of  ideas,  but  it  was  so  firmly  fixed  as 
never  afterward  to  be  broken.  The  lesson  once  learned 
was  not  forgotten,  and  in  this  particular  the  pike's  edu- 
cation was  complete.  He  was  trained  up  in  the  way 
he  should  go,  and  did  not  depart  from  it.  It  is  precisely 
in  this  manner — namely,  by  threats  and  blows — that  a 
cat  is  taught  not  to  touch  caged  birds.  The  natural- 
ist Lenz  tells  of  an  old  tabby  which,  having  been  thus 
trained,  imparted  the  instruction  to  her  kittens  in  the 
some  way,  cuffing  them  whenever  they  approached  the 
cage  with  the  feline  stealth  indicative  of  felonious  in- 
tent. 

By  an  application  of  the  same  principle,  a  horse  is 
taught  to  stop  at  the  word  "  whoa  "  ;  namely,  by  attach- 
ing a  rein  to  the  animal's  foot  and  pulling  the  foot 
clear  of  the  ground  every  time  the  word  "  whoa "  is 
uttered.  The  horse  is  thereby  forced  to  stop,  and  thus 
learns  what  "  whoa  "  means,  and  acts  accordingly.  It 
is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that  such  an  absolute  con- 
nection is  established  between  the  sound  "whoa"  and 
the  pulling  of  the  forefoot  from  the  ground  as  to  make 
the  horse  think  of  the  act  whenever  he  hears  the  word. 
If  this  were  the  case,  the  animal,  on  hearing  the  word, 
would  not  only  stop,  but  also  lift  the  forefoot. 
The  procedure  is  purely  didactic.      The  horse  learns 


MIND  IN  MAN  AND  BRUTE.  189 

what  his  master  means  by  "  whoa/'  and  obeys,  but  no 
longer  thinks  of  how  he  came  to  learn  the  lesson,  any 
more  than  a  man,  who  in  his  youth  was  compelled  to 
study  Latin  by  the  application  of  the  rod,  thinks  of  "  the 
threatening  twigs  of  birch"  whenever  he  reads  a  Ho- 
ratian  ode  or  a  Virgilian  eclogue. 

Few  persons  have  any  conception  of  the  pains  taken 
by  a  parent  bird  to  teach  her  little  ones  how  to  get 
their  living  and  to  make  their  way  in  the  world.  Thus, 
for  example,  a  mother  sparrow  may  be  often  seen,  at  the 
proper  season  seated  with  her  fledgelings  on  the  ridge 
of  a  roof  and  letting  a  pea,  berry,  or  round  piece  of 
bread  roll  down  into  the  eaves-trough.  She  repeats  this 
performance  until  one  of  the  most  precocious  and  alert 
of  the  brood  takes  part  in  the  game,  and  very  soon  the 
whole  family  join  in  the  sport,  hopping  after  the  roll- 
ing object  and  vying  with  each  other  in  securing  it. 
The  mother  now  varies  the  performance  by  catching 
the  thing  before  it  reaches  the  gutter.  After  a  time 
the  young  birds  succeed  in  this  more  di£.icult  exploit, 
and  thus  take  their  first  lesson  in  the  art  of  seizing 
moving  objects.  C'est  le  premier  pas  qui  cotite.  The 
skill  acquired  in  capturing  a  rolling  bread-crumb  is 
easily  applied  to  a  flying  bug. 

The  way  in  which  many  psychologists  talk  about 
the  mental  faculties  of  animals  recalls  Heine's  interview 
with  the  old  lizard  at  Lucca.  In  the  discussion  which 
ensued,  the  poet  dropped  the  words  "I  think." 
"Think!"  cried  the  lizard,  with  a  sharp,  aristocratic 
tone  of  profound  contempt;  "think!  which  of  you 
thinks?  For  three  thousand  years,  wise  sir,  I  have  in- 
vestigated the  spiritual  functions  of  animals,  and  have 
made  men  and  apes  the  special  objects  of  my  study. 


190  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

I  have  devoted  myself  to  these  queer  creatures  with 
as  great  zeal  and  diligence  as  Lyonnet  to  his  caterpil- 
lars; and,  as  the  result  of  my  researches,  I  can  assure 
you  that  no  man  thinks.  Now  and  then  something 
occurs  to  him;  and  these  accidentally  occurring  some- 
things he  calls  thoughts,  and  stringing  them  together 
he  calls  thinking.  But  you  can  take  my  word  for  it, 
no  man  thinks;  no  philosopher  thinks;  neither  Schell- 
ing  nor  Hegel  ever  thought;  and,  so  far  as  their  philos- 
ophy is  concerned,  it  is  mere  air  and  water,  like  vapours 
in  the  sky.  I  have  already  seen  countless  successions 
of  these  clouds  floating  proudly  and  securely  over  my 
head,  and  the  next  morning's  sun  dissolved  them  into 
their  original  nothingness.  There  is,  in  reality,  but 
one  true  philosophy,  and  that  is  engraven  in  eternal 
hieroglyphics  on  my  own  tail."  This  lordly  and  dis- 
dainful attitude  of  the  venerable  saurian  toward  the 
human  race  is  a  witty  persiflage  of  the  anthropocentric 
conceit  which  perverts  man's  views  of  his  relations  to 
the  lower  animals. 

If  a  writer,  with  the  critical  acumen  of  Gervinus, 
asserts  that  the  nations  of  antiquity  "took  no  delight 
in  Nature,"  and  Schiller  affirms  that  "Nature  in- 
terested the  understanding  and  excited  the  curiosity 
of  the  Greeks,  but  did  not  awaken  in  them  any  moral 
feeling,"  if  keen  thinkers  thus  fail  to  get  a  clear  and 
correct  appreciation  of  the  mental  and  emotional  ca- 
pacities of  their  fellow-men  in  earlier  epochs  and  more 
primitive  stages  of  intellectual  development,  how  much 
more  difficult  must  it  be  to  analyze  and  estimate  aright 
the  psychical  phenomena  of  animal  life  that  lie  still 
remoter  from  our  own! 

It  is  a  significant  circumstance  that  metaphysicians 


MIND  IN  MAN  AND  BRUTE.  191 

have  never  made  any  valuable  contributions  to  zoopsy- 
chology. This  is  because  they  have  always  discussed 
the  mental  constitution  of  animals  without  having  ade- 
quately observed  their  habits,  or  have  endeavoured  to 
make  such  facts  as  came  within  their  range  of  observa- 
tion fit  into  some  preconceived  theory,  discarding  as 
worthless  whatever  could  find  no  place  in  the  systems 
of  thought  they  were  pledged  to  uphold.  Wild  specu- 
lation on  a  small  amount  of  real  capital  is  apt  to  prove 
as  disastrous  in  the  province  of  philosophy  as  on  the 
stock  exchange. 

Aristotle,  who  was  perhaps  less  liable  to  this  re- 
proach and  dealt  more  with  positives  than  any  of  his 
contemporaries,  maintained,  nevertheless,  that  heart- 
beating  is  a  phenomenon  peculiar  to  man,  "  because 
he  alone  is  moved  by  hope  and  expectation."  The  pro- 
cess of  reasoning  which  led  the  Stagirite  to  this  absurd 
conclusion  seems  to  have  been  something  as  follows: 
Fearful  or  pleasurable  anticipation  causes  the  heart  to 
beat,  and  this  pulsation  can  occur  only  where  such 
feelings  exist.  The  lower  animals,  however,  live  wholly 
in  the  present,  do  not  look  forward  to  the  future,  and 
are  not  agitated  by  pleasant  or  painful  presentiments: 
therefore,  their  hearts  do  not  beat.  Such  is  the  vicious 
circle  in  which  the  greatest  logician  and  clearest  thinker 
of  antiquity  allowed  himself  to  be  caught,  through  ex- 
cessive confidence  in  the  validity  of  syllogisms  and  the 
lack  of  a  little  observation.  An  Athenian  boy  with  a 
bird  in  his  hand  would  have  put  him  to  shame,  and 
laughed  his  logic  to  scorn.  Cassiodorus  held  that  the 
life  of  the  lower  animals  resides  in  the  blood,  whereas 
the  anima,  or  soul,  is  a  principle  peculiar  to  man,  and 
distinct  from  the  blood,  and  based  this  fanciful  theory 


192  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

on  a  false  etjmaology:  anima  quasi  dvatfui,  id  est  a 
sanguine  longe  discreta,  wliich  would  identify  spirituality 
with  ancemia. 

Lactantius,  in  discussing  the  origin  of  error  (Inst. 
Div.  Lib.  11.  cap  10),  makes  a  still  more  subtile  and 
strained  distinction  between  men  and  brutes.  "  For 
we/'  he  says,  "being  a  heavenly  and  immortal  race, 
make  use  of  fire,  which  is  given  to  us  as  a  proof  of  im- 
mortality, since  fire  is  from  heaven;  and  its  nature,  in- 
asmuch as  it  rises  upward,  contains  the  principle  of  life. 
But  the  lower  animals,  inasmuch  as  they  are  alto- 
gether mortal,  make  use  of  water  only,  which  is  a  cor- 
poreal and  earthly  element,  and  because  of  its  unstable 
nature  and  downward  tendency,  shows  a  figure  of  death. 
Therefore,  the  cattle  do  not  look  up  to  heaven,  nor  do 
they  entertain  religious  sentiments,  since  the  use  of 
fire  is  removed  from  them."  Elsewhere  in  the  same 
apology  (II.  1)  he  states  as  a  significant  fact  that  the 
Greeks  called  man  av6p(oiTo<i  because  he  looks  upward. 
It  is  strange  how  much  stress  has  been  laid  upon  this 
false  etymology  (for  the  word  means  man-faced,  and 
contains  no  suggestion  of  looking  upward),  what  far- 
reaching  physiological  inferences  have  been  drawn  from 
it,  and  for  how  many  centuries  poets  have  not  ceased 
to  ring  changes  upon  it.  Looking  upward  is,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  a  physiological  peculiarity  of  the 
stargazer  and  the  sea  devil,  but  not  of  man,  who 
naturally  looks  straightforward,  and  can  look  upward, 
as  Galen  remarked  more  than  sixteen  centuries  ago, 
only  by  painfully  bending  back  his  head.  The  goose 
is  infinitely  his  superior  in  the  ease  with  which  it  can 
turn  its  eyes  heavenward. 

Yet  Ovid  says — 


MIND  IN  MAN  AND  BRUTE.  193 

Pronaque  cum  spectent  animalia  cetera  terram, 
Os  homini  sublime  dedit,  coelumque  tueri 
Jussit ;  et  erectos  ad  sidera  tollere  vultus. 

Less  than  a  century  later  Silius  Italicus,  in  his  epic  of 
the  Second  Punic  War  (xv.),  amplified  the  verses  of 
his  precursor  and  prototype  as  follows: 

Nonne  vides  hominum  ut  celsos  ad  sidera  vultus, 
Sustulerit  Deus,  ac  sublimia  finxerit  ora? 
Cum  pecudes,  volucrumque  genus,  formasque  feranim, 
Segnem  atque  obscenam  passim  stravisset  in  alvum. 

Eacine  repeats  the  same  thought  in  the  lines — 

L'homme  616ve  un  front  noble  et  regarde  les  cieux, 

and  Milton  embodies  it  in  his  description  of  creation 
in  still  fuller  and  more  poetic  form: 

There  wanted  yet  the  master- work,  the  end 
Of  all  yet  done ;  a  creature  who,  not  prone 
And  brute  as  other  creatures,  but  endued 
With  sanctity  of  Reason,  might  erect 
His  stature,  and  upright  with  front  serene 
Govern  the  rest,  self-knowing ;  and  from  thence, 
Magnanimous,  to  correspond  with  heaven. 

Cowper  sings  the  same  strain: 

Brutes  graze  the  mountain-top  with  faces  prone 
And  eyes  intent  upon  the  scanty  herb 
It  yields  them, 

as  though  the  hungry  savage  were  any  less  "intent" 
upon  the  food  with  which  he  gluts  his  maw. 

Birds  not  only  stand  erect,  but  also,  by  the  power 
of  flight,  free  themselves  more  than  mammals  from 
bondage  to  the  earth.  "But,"  says  Steinthal,  "how- 
ever high  they  may  soar,  they  still  belong  to  the  earth." 
The  same  is  true  of  man,  however  far 


194  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

His  piercing  eyes  erect  appear  to  view 
Superior  worlds,  and  look  all  Nature  through. 

The  ant  is  not  inferior  to  the  bee  in  intelligence  be- 
cause it  crawls  on  the  ground  instead  of  hovering  in 
the  air.  The  owl  surpasses  man  in  the  facility  and  free- 
dom with,  which  it  can  turn  its  head  in  every  direction, 
but  this  flexibility  of  its  neck  does  not  contribute  in 
any  degree  to  the  enlargement  of  its  mental  horizon. 
Steinthal  compares  the  brute  to  a  piece  of  cloth  fast- 
ened at  all  four  corners  to  the  ground,  whereas  man  is 
like  a  piece  of  cloth  attached  at  only  two  points,  so 
that  the  greater  part  of  it  flutters  in  the  air.  "  The 
influence  of  this  power  of  free  motion,"  he  adds,  "  in 
promoting  the  development  of  intellectuality  is  incal- 
culable." This  rather  vulgar  comparison  of  man  to  a 
flapping  sheet,  recalling  somewhat  ludicrously  the  pos- 
sibility of  his  being  "  two  sheets  in  the  wind,"  does 
not  illustrate  in  the  least  the  point  in  question. 

Man's  superiority  of  bodily  structure  and  constitu- 
tion in  respect  to  his  mental  development  was  very 
succinctly  stated  by  Herbart  nearly  a  century  ago,  as 
follows:  "He  has  hands;  he  has  speech;  he  lives 
through  a  long,  helpless  childhood."  (Er  Jiat  Hdnde; 
er  hat  Sprache;  er  durclilebt  eine  lange,  hulflose  Kind- 
heit.  Werke,  vi.  p.  206.)  The  last-mentioned  point 
has  been  taken  up  and  most  fully  and  satisfactorily 
worked  out  by  Mr.  John  Fiske.  Animals  without 
hands,  or  prehensile  organs  that  may  by  use  be  con- 
verted into  hands,  derive  no  intellectual  advantage 
whatever  from  an  upright  position.  The  penguin  may 
have  the  habit  of  standing  erect  on  its  feet  and  flop- 
ping its  quill-less  wings  for  countless  generations  with- 
out adding  in  the  least  to  the  size  or  complexity  of 


MIND  IN  MAN  AND  BRUTE.  195 

its  brain.  The  assumption  and  permanent  maintenance 
of  an  upright  posture  marked  an  epoch  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  human  race,  only  as  contributing  to  the 
differentiation  of  the  hand  from  the  foot,  and  to  the 
development  of  the  former  as  an  organ  of  investigation 
instead  of  a  means  of  locomotion. 

The  form  and  flexibility  of  the  hand  and  the  ex- 
treme delicacy  of  the  sense  of  touch,  especially  in  the 
tips  of  the  fingers,  are  the  chief  sources  of  man^s  in- 
tellectual progress,  so  far  as  this  is  dependent  upon 
his  physical  structure.  The  capability  of  grasping  an 
object  with  firmness  and  precision  and  holding  it  with 
ease  and  exactness  in  a  variety  of  positions  not  only 
renders  possible  the  use  of  tools,  the  acquisition  of  me- 
chanical skill,  and  the  growth  of  the  arts,  but  also  exerts 
a  direct  influence  upon  the  intellect  by  cultivating  the 
powers  of  close  observation  and  intense  concentration 
of  thought.  It  is  by  no  means  a  mere  accidental  coin- 
cidence that  many  words  used  to  denote  operations  of 
the  mind  are  spiritualizations  of  the  functions  of  the 
hand;  as,  for  example,  when  we  speak  of  grasping  or 
handling  a  subject,  seizing  a  point,  catching  an  idea, 
and  comprehending  a  proposition.  These  expressions, 
now  employed  as  simple  figures  of  speech,  are.  records 
of  real  facts  and  natural  processes  in  the  early  educa- 
tional history  of  mankind,  since  it  was  by  the  frequent 
repetition  of  the  manual  action  that  the  higher  and 
fuller  mental  life  of  the  individual  was  developed  and 
the  progress  of  the  race  promoted. 

The  mental  and  moral  value  of  mechanical  labour 
as  a  discipline  for  the  young  is  now  just  beginning  to 
be  appreciated  and  to  be  assigned  its  proper  place  in 
pedagogics.    The  boy  who  has  learned  to  draw  a  straight 


196  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

line  has  learned  a  lesson  in  rectitude;  and  in  making 
a  box  or  a  table  he  builds  up  his  own  character,  and 
gives  it  additional  symmetry  and  stability.  The  in- 
fluences which  civilized  the  race  in  its  infancy  are  still 
the  most  efficient  agencies  in  civilizing  each  individual; 
for,  notwithstanding  the  hereditary  transmission  of 
culture,  as  yet  every  healthy  child  is  born  into  the  world 
more  or  less  a  savage. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

PEOGEESS      AND     PEBFECTIBILITY      IN      THE      LOWEH 
ANIMALS. 

Animal  and  human  institutions.  Domestic  and  social  life  of 
beasts  and  birds.  Bee  colonies.  Improvements  in  nest  build- 
ing. Architectural  skill  of  ants  and  termites.  Destructive 
energy  of  the  latter.  Immense  size  of  their  mounds.  Artifi- 
cial comb  foundation  for  bees.  Perfectibility  of  the  species. 
Effects  of  specialization  in  training.  Influence  of  domes- 
tication. Schutz's  theory  of  animals  as  puppets  of  higher 
powers. 

What  we  call  institutions  are  only  organized  and 
hereditary  instincts,  and  are  common  to  man  and  the 
lower  animals.  The  original  social  character  of  ani- 
mals, which  forms  the  basis  of  their  institutions,  is 
also  the  quality  that  renders  them  capable  of  domes- 
tication. Man  simply  takes  advantage  of  this  quality, 
and  turns  it  to  his  own  account  by  bringing  the  ani- 
mal into  his  own  domestic  circle  and  service  and  mak- 
ing it  a  member  of  his  household. 

In  birds,  for  example,  the  conjugal  instinct  is  re- 
markably strong,  or,  as  we  would  say  in  speaking  of 
human  relations,  the  institution  of  marriage,  either  in 
its  monogamous  or  polygamous  form,  is  firmly  estab- 
lished and  highly  developed,  and  forms  the  founda- 
tion of  a  well-ordered  domestic  and  social  life. 

197 


198  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

The  paternal  fox  trains  his  young  with  as  much 
care  and  conscientiousness  as  any  human  father;  the 
beaver  constructs  his  habitation  with  the  foresight  of  a 
military  engineer  and  the  skill  of  an  experienced  archi- 
tect; the  bee  lives  in  well-regulated  communities,  forms 
states,  and  founds  colonies;  and  the  ant  not  only  cul- 
tivates the  soil,  plants  crops,  gathers  in  the  fruits  of 
his  labour  and  stores  them  for  future  use,  and  keeps 
other  insects  as  domestic  cattle,  but  shares  also  the 
vicious  propensities  and  domineering  disposition  of  man, 
waging  war  on  creatures  of  his  own  species  and  holding 
his  prisoners  as  slaves. 

These  habits  or  customs  have  the  same  origin  and 
character  in  the  lower  animals  as  in  man,  being  in 
both  cases  products  of  evolution  and  undergoing  modi- 
fications from  generation  to  generation.  Animal,  not 
less  than  human,  societies  are  governed  by  their  laws 
and  traditions,  and  preserve  a  sort  of  historical  con- 
tinuity by  which  past  and  present  are  bound  together 
in  a  certain  orderly  sequence.  Beehives  which  suffer 
from  over-population  rear  a  new  queen  and  send  forth 
with  the  old  one  a  swarm  of  emigrants  to  colonize, 
and  the  relations  of  the  mother-hive  to  her  colonies  are 
known  to  be  much  closer  and  more  cordial  than  those 
which  she  sustains  to  apian  communities  with  which 
she  has  no  genetic  connection.  Here  the  ties  of  kin- 
ship are  as  strong  and  clearly  recognised  as  they  are 
between  consanguineous  tribes  of  men. 

Again,  the  statement  that  animal  habits  are  fixed, 
and  human  customs  variable  and  improvable,  is  true 
only  to  a  very  limited  extent.  Closer  observation  has 
shown  the  latter  to  be  more  stable  and  the  former  more 
mutable  than  is  generally  imagined,  especially  if  we 


PROGRESS  AND  PERFECTIBILITY.  199 

compare  the  highest  orders  of  animals  with  the  lowest 
human  tribes.  In  primitive  society  and  among  savage 
races  customs  remain  the  same  for  countless  genera- 
tions, and  seem  to  be  quite  as  persistent  and  incapable 
of  change  as  animal  instiacts. 

Not  only  do  animals,  often  in  the  course  of  a  com-  ' 
paratively  short  period,  undergo  marvellous  transforma- 
tions both  of  mind  and  body,  through  the  force  of 
natural  selection  or  by  careful  interbreeding,  but  they 
are  also  led  by  circumstances  and  through  forethought 
to  make  conscious  and  intentional  changes  in  their 
manner  of  life.  ^ 

It  is  curious  to  note  the  variety  of  characteristics 
distinguishing  members  of  the  same  family  or  genus. 
Thus,  the  European  cuckoo  lays  her  eggs  in  the  nests 
of  other  birds,  and  leads  the  life  of  a  shiftless  parasite 
and  shameless  polyandrous  vagabond.  The  American 
cuckoo,  on  the  contrary,  has  not  yet  learned  to  shirk 
her  maternal  duties  and  domestic  responsibilities,  but, 
like  an  honest  and  thrifty  housewife  anc  conscientious 
mother,  hatches  her  own  eggs  and  rears  her  own  young. 
The  South  African  and  Australasian  representatives  of 
the  cuculincB  follow,  in  this  respect,  the  habits  of  the 
European  bird.  There  is  also  a  species  of  molothruSy 
which  sometimes  begins  but  seldom  finishes  a  nest,  like 
the  hypothetical  man  in  the  parable,  who  would  fain 
build  without  first  sitting  down  to  count  the  cost. 
She  is  seized  occasionally  with  a  spasm  of  virtuous  en- 
deavour in  this  direction,  but  soon  yields  to  the  greater 
comfort  and  convenience  of  imposing  upon  others  the 
burden  of  brooding  and  nurturing  her  offspring.  Evi- 
dently she  turns  the  matter  over  in  her  mind,  and,  like 
Rousseau,  reasons  herself  into   the  belief  that  it   is 


200  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

better  not  to  assume  any  family  cares,  but  to  cast  her 
children  as  foundlings  upon  the  bosom  of  public  charity. 
"  There  are  the  goldfinches,  thrushes,  fly-catchers,  car- 
dinal grossbeaks,  and  other  fussy  motherly  fowl,"  she 
seems  to  say,  "  willing  enough  to  undertake  the 
charge;  why  not  gratify  their  low  philoprogenitive  pas- 
sion, and  thus  enable  me  to  devote  myself  to  more 
congenial  pursuits!"  Still  another  kind  of  molothrus 
leads  the  life  of  a  squatter,  never  building  a  nest  of 
her  own,  but  brooding  in  the  abandoned  nest  of  some 
other  bird. 

Many  birds  have,  within  the  memory  of  man,  made 
considerable  advances  in  architectural  skill,  and  adopted 
new  and  improved  methods  of  constructing  their  nests. 
This  progress  has  been  observed  especially  in  the  swal- 
lows of  California  since  the  settlement  of  that  country, 
and  in  all  cases  the  young  profit  from  the  knowledge  ac- 
quired by  their  parents,  and  the  improvement  becomes  a 
permanent  possession  of  the  race.  In  places  where  they 
are  particularly  exposed  to  the  attacks  of  pugnacious 
sparrows,  they  have  been  known  to  close  the  opening  in 
front  of  their  nests  and  make  the  entrance  on  the  back 
near  the  wall.  In  some  instances  this  purely  precau- 
tionary and  defensive  change  of  structure,  after  its 
efficiency  had  been  tested  in  a  single  nest,  has  been 
adopted  by  the  swallows  of  an  entire  district.  Orioles, 
according  to  the  observations  of  Dr.  Abbott,  finding 
that  the  bough  from  which  they  have  suspended  their 
nest  is  too  slight  to  sustain  the  weight  of  the  full  brood, 
attach  it  by  a  long  string  to  the  branch  above,  fasten- 
ing it  securely  "by  a  number  of  turns  and  a  knot." 
It  would  be  difficult  to  say  in  what  respect  the  mental 
process  leading  to  the  adoption  of  such  a  mechanical 


PROGEESS  AND  PERFECTIBILITY.  201 

contrivance  differs  from  that  which  causes  an  architect 
to  buttress  a  weak  wall. 

The  Baltimore  oriole  also  adapts  the  texture  and 
structure  of  its  nest  to  the  exigencies  of  climate.  In 
the  Southern  States  it  selects  a  site  on  the  north  side 
of  a  tree,  and  builds  of  Spanish  moss  loosely  put  to- 
gether and  without  lining,  so  as  to  permit  a  free  circula- 
tion of  air.  Farther  north  it  seeks  a  sunny  exposure, 
builds  more  compactly,  and  uses  some  soft  material 
for  lining.  The  impulse  to  build  is  instinctive,  but 
conscious  intelligence  is  exercised  in  modifying  the 
methods  of  building  to  suit  circumstances. 

The  same  bird  now  uses  yarn  and  worsted  instead 
of  vegetable  fibre  for  its  nest,  but  it  always  selects  for 
this  purpose  the  least  conspicuous  colours,  such  as  gray 
and  drab;  and  yet  the  bird's  gorgeous  plumage  is  proof, 
according  to  the  theory  of  sexual  attraction,  that  bright 
colours  are  pleasing  to  it.  Here  we  have  an  example 
of  aesthetic  pleasure  being  subordinated  to  considera- 
tions of  safety;  the  prudent  oriole,  no  withstanding 
its  fondness  for  resplendent  hues,  choosing  those  colours 
which  render  its  nest  less  visible  and  more  difficult  to 
discover,  and  rejecting  those  which,  in  other  respects, 
are  more  gratifying  to  its  fancy. 

The  tailor-bird  of  East  India  used  to  stitch  the 
leaves  of  its  nest  together  with  fine  grass,  horsehair, 
and  threads,  which  it  twisted  out  of  wool;  since  the 
introduction  of  British  manufactures  it  uses  sewing 
thread  and  the  filaments  of  textile  fabrics,  except  in 
remote  regions,  where  the  ingenious  bird  still  works 
on  in  the  primitive  way.  So,  too,  in  America,  birds  in 
constructing  their  nests  everywhere  turn  to  their  ac- 
count the  products  of  human  industry  and  keep  abreast 


202  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

with  the  progress  of  the  age.  The  materials  employed 
correspond  to  the  contemporary  state  of  civilization, 
and  mark  the  periods  of  industrial  development  through 
which  the  human  race  has  passed.  The  wagtails,  in  a 
watch-making  district  of  Switzerland,  have  learned  to 
build  their  nests  of  fine  steel  shavings;  a  nest  of  this 
kind,  if  preserved,  would  indicate  to  the  inhabitants 
of  that  country  a  thousand  years  hence  the  kind  of 
industry  that  was  carried  on  by  their  ancestors.  Spar- 
rows, which  usually  build  in  chinks  of  walls  or  under 
roofs,  if  forced  to  build  their  nests  in  trees  or  other 
unsheltered  places,  cover  them  with  a  sort  of  hood  to 
keep  out  the  rain.  Buff  on,  who  records  this  fact,  adds: 
Uinstinct  se  manifest  done  id  par  un  sentiment  presque 
raisonne  et  qui  suppose  au  moins  la  comparaison  de 
deux  petites  idees.  In  the  presence  of  such  clear  mani- 
festations of  thought  and  reflection,  it  seems  absurd 
to  speak  of  a  "  sentiment  almost  reasoned,"  or  to  in- 
dulge in  condescending  baby-talk  about  "two  little 
ideas." 

Apiarists  now  provide  their  hives  with  artificial  comb 
foundation  on  which  the  bees  build  and  are  thus  re- 
lieved of  some  of  the  labour  performed  by  their  pred- 
ecessors.* Instead  of  gathering  propolis  from  the 
buds  of  plants,  the  workers  stop  their  hives  with  the 
mixture  of  resin  and  turpentine  with  which  the  arbori- 
culturist salves  wounded  trees,  "and  readily  substitute 
oatmeal  or  the  flour  of  wheat  and  rye  for  pollen,  if 
they  can  not  easily  procure  the  latter.  In  countries 
where  the   flowers  blossom  late   these   surrogates   are 

*  A  very  superior  kind  of  comb  foundation  is  manufactured  by 
Gustav  Ad.  Friderich  in  Greifswald,  Germany. 


PROGRESS  AND  PERFECTIBILITY.  203 

often  provided  by  apiarists  and  placed  before  the  hivea 
in  the  early  spring.  In  Cuba  the  bees  pillage  the  sugar 
plantations,  and  in  North  Germany,  near  Stettin,  the 
numerous,  sugar  refineries  are  subject  to  the  same 
depredations.  In  Barbadoes,  where  these  sources  of 
supply  are  accessible  during  the  whole  year,  the  bees 
gradually  cease  to  gather  honey  from  flowers  and  ap- 
propriate the  products  of  human  industry.  They  also 
visit  cellars,  in  which  kegs  of  syrup  are  stored,  for  the 
same  purpose,  and  indulge  in  stolen  sweets  to  such  ex- 
cess that  they  fall  to  the  ground  and  perish,  so  that 
the  apiarists  suffer  considerable  loss.  Huber  gives  an 
interesting  account  of  the  manner  in  which  honeybees 
rob  bumblebees  in  times  of  scarcity,  carrying  on  this 
spoliation  systematically  for  several  weeks  until  noth- 
ing is  left.* 

In  a  work  entitled  A  Modern  Bee  Farm,  Mr.  S. 
Simmins  describes  the  "sweating"  methods  by  which 
practical  apiarists  turn  the  industrial  virtue  of  bees 
to  the  best  account.  Large  fields  of  \"hite  clover, 
borage,  and  sanfoin  planted  near  the  hives  enable  the 
bees  to  gather  honey  with  the  least  possible  loss  of 
time,  and  it  is  estimated  that  seventy-five  acres  of  these 
flowering  herbs  will  occupy  one  hundred  hives  profit- 
ably for  three  months  (June,  July,  and  August),  and 
produce  ten  thousand  pounds  of  honey  in  a  single  sea- 
son. The  triumph  of  the  "  sweater^s "  art,  says  Mr. 
Simmins,  is  in  inducing  the  bees  to  fetch  this  enormous 
quantity  of  honey,  without  neglecting  the  arrange- 
ments for  storing  it  in  the  hives.     The  honey,  being 

*  See  Ludwig  Btichner,  Aus  dem  Geistesleben  der  Thiere,  4th 
ed.    Thomas :  Leipzig,  1896,  pp.  322-334. 
14 


204  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOaY. 

liquid,  must  be  bottled,  and  the  bees  will  only  put  it 
into  comb  of  the  exact  size  and  texture,  which  in- 
stinct has  taught  them  to  make.  As  comb-making  is 
much  lighter  and  safer  work  than  honey-gathering, 
with  its  dangers  from  storms,  wasps,  and  birds,  it  is 
generally  assigned  to  young  bees,  while  their  elders  go 
afield.  In  order  that  as  few  bees  as  possible  may  remain 
in  the  hive  for  this  purpose,  the  bee-keeper  provides 
ready-made  foundations  for  the  cells,  stamped  in  real 
wax  and  of  the  natural  size.  He  also  removes  the 
combs  full  of  honey,  spins  them  round  in  a  tin  churn, 
and  replaces  them  in  the  hive  empty — a  hint  which 
the  bees  take  as  as  invitation  to  refill  them.  The  bees 
seem  delighted  to  make  the  most  of  the  opportunities 
so  thoughtfully  provided  for  them.  By  using  the  me- 
chanically stamped  "  foundations  "  for  their  cells,  they 
make  a  more  perfect  and  symmetrical  comb  than  is 
often  constructed  without  help.  The  bottoms  being 
regular,  no  "  crooked  comb  "  is  ever  built  upon  it.  The 
size  stamped  is  also  uniformly  that  of  worker  cells; 
thus,  there  is  no  room  for  drone  cells,  producing  bees 
which  can  not  be  "  sweated "  or  made  profitable  in 
any  way.  Mr.  Simmins  thinks  that  the  trial  of  this 
system  for  another  twenty  years  "may  possibly  show 
certain  strains  developing  a  tendency  to  forget  how  to 
construct  comb  foundation,  just  as  some  breeds  of  fowls 
are  forgetting  how  to  hatch  their  eggs.  We  can  not 
suggest  an  improvement  in  the  architecture  of  the  cells 
because  they  are  mechanically  perfect  in  economy  of 
material  and  space.  But  the  readiness  with  which 
the  honeybee  has  accepted  and  incorporated  in  its 
comb  the  materials  supplied  by  man  would  seem  to 
indicate  the  possibility  of  further  experiments  to  de- 


PROGRESS  AND  PERFECTIBILITY.  205 

termine  how  far  its  mechanical  instinct  is  capable  of 
modification."  It  is  a  mistake  to  attribute  the  hexagonal 
structure  of  the  cells  to  mechanical  instinct,  since  it  is 
due  solely  to  external  pressure.  The  melipona  or  native 
American  bee  constructs  long  and  round  cells  which 
show  no  approach  to  the  hexagonal  form,  except  when 
they  are  in  close  contact,  so  that  the  whole  is  filled 
without  interstices.  Indeed  this  is  the  shape  which 
all  soft  and  pliable  balls  or  cylinders  take  when  they 
are  pressed  uniformly  together.  Thus,  if  water  be 
poured  into  a  bottle  filled  with  peas,  the  latter,  as 
they  swell  and  press  against  each  other,  will  gradually 
change  from  spheres  into  hexagons.  In  like  manner 
soap  bubbles  produced  by  blowing  into  a  basin  of 
suds  are  six-sided  so  long  as  they  remain  in  contact, 
but  become  spherical  when  they  float  off  singly  into 
the  air.  The  originally  round  cells  of  the  human 
body  become  hexagonal  when  pressed  together  in  the 
mucous  membrane,  in  tumours,  cancerous  formations, 
and  other  morbid  growths.  Although  hees  are  re- 
markably conservative,  it  is  evident  that  their  meth- 
ods of  work  may  be  considerably  modified  by  human 
agency. 

The  facts  already  mentioned,  and  many  others 
which  might  be  adduced,  suffice  to  prove  that  animals 
avail  themselves  of  new  discoveries  and  easier  methods 
in  order  to  increase  the  comforts  and  conveniences  of 
life. 

Haeckel  asserts  that  the  rude  aboriginal  ants,  which 
lived  many  thousand  years  ago,  perhaps  as  early  as  in 
the  Chalk  period,  had  as  little  idea  of  the  advanced 
division  of  labour  prevailing  in  the  different  modern 
ant  states  as  our  forefathers  of  the  Stone  age  had  of 


206  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

the  culture  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Both  ants  and 
men  have  worked  themselves  up  to  their  present  stage 
of  development  on  the  slow  and  painful  path  of  pro- 
gressive evolution.  Even  now  there  are  varieties  of 
ants  which  know  nothing  of  the  exact  and  elaborate 
system  of  division  of  labour  found  in  civilized  formican 
communities,  and  which  bear  the  same  relation  to  the 
latter  that  the  rude  aborigines  of  Africa  and  Australia 
do  to  the  civilized  nations  of  the  present  day.  The 
same  is  true  of  the  hymenoptera  and  arachnida,  in 
whose  habitations  there  is  traceable  a  process  of  archi- 
tectural evolution  analogous  to  that  which  has  taken 
place  in  the  history  of  mankind.  This  is  evident  from 
a  comparison  of  the  nests  of  wasps  and  bumblebees 
and  the  cells  of  the  native  American  bee  {Melipona) 
with  the  perfectly  formed  comb  of  the  European  honey- 
bee, or  the  habits  of  ordinary  earth  spiders  with  those 
of  trapdoor  spiders. 

x\nt  hills  are  very  complicated  structures.  They 
are  partly  under  the  earth  and  partly  above  it,  and  con- 
sist often  of  twenty  to  forty  stories,  thus  relatively  sur- 
passing in  size  the  sky-scraping  edifices  of  modern 
American  cities.  They  are  constructed  of  pieces  of 
wood,  earth,  pebbles,  leaves,  stems  of  plants,  pine- 
needles,  and  other  materials  apparently  lying  promiscu- 
ously in  heaps,  but  found  on  closer  examination  to  be 
arranged  so  as  to  form  halls,  corridors,  and  rooms 
adapted  to  the  wants  of  the  inhabitants.  It  is  also 
curious  to  note  how  they  make  changes  in  these  dwell- 
ings to  suit  their  needs.  Sometimes  the  work  of  one 
ant  will  be  torn  down  and  rebuilt  by  others  in  a  differ- 
ent manner  after  due  consultation;  thus  mistakes  are 
corrected  and  improvements  introduced.      Interesting 


PROGRESS  AND  PERFECTIBILITY.  207 

observations  of  this  kind  are  recorded  in  the  notebooks 
of  Pierre  Huber.* 

Still  more  remarkable  as  architects  are  the  termites 
or  white  ants  of  the  tropics;  they  are  also  more  ad- 
vanced than  the  emmet  in  their  social  and  political 
organization.  In  Africa  their  habitations  begin  with  a 
series  of  pyramids  about  a  foot  high,  which  increase  in 
size  and  number  with  the  growth  of  the  community, 
and  are  finally  joined  together  and  covered  over  with 
a  cupola  consisting  of  a  firm  coating  of  clay.  The  fin- 
ished domelike  structure  often  attains  the  height  of 
ten  and  even  twenty  feet,  and  is  made  of  clay,  stones, 
pieces  of  wood,  and  similar  materials  cemented  to- 
gether with  the  mucilaginous  spittle  of  the  termites. 
The  cone-shaped  hillocks  resemble  haystacks,  and  at  a 
distance  are  easily  mistaken  by  travellers  for  the  huts 
of  the  natives.  Indeed,  at  first  sight  a  termite  village 
can  hardly  be  distinguished  from  a  negro  village.  They 
are  so  solidly  built  that  they  not  only  resist  storms  and 
the  assaults  of  foes,  but  also  sustain  the  weight  of  a 
man  and  do  not  yield  to  the  pressure  of  a  heavily  laden 
wagon.  It  is  said  that  gazelles,  buffaloes,  and  even  ele- 
phants are  seen  standing  on  them,  and  using  them  as 
points  of  observation,  f 

Some  species  of  termites  build  in  the  form  of 
truncated  columns  or  gigantic  fungi  with  a  round  roof 
projecting  about  two  or  three  inches  and  resting  on  a 

*  Both  Frangois  Huber  and  Darwin  have  noticed  a  like  liabil- 
ity to  error  on  the  part  of  bees  in  building  comb  cells,  thus  proving 
that  they  are  not  always  guided  by  unerring  instinct.  To  err  is 
apian  as  well  as  human,  and  the  tendency  is  due  in  both  cases  to 
the  same  cause — namely,  fallibility  of  the  reasoning  faculties. 

f  BUchner,  pp.  326-228. 


208  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

cylindrical  base  some  four  or  five  feet  high.  In  regions 
subiect  to  inundations  their  dwellings  are  constructed 
like  barrels  round  the  trunks  of  dead  trees  and  com- 
municate with  the  ground  by  means  of  corridors  or  pas- 
sageways bored  through  the  wood. 

Blanchard,  in  his  Eapport  sur  les  Travaux  Scien- 
tifiques  des  Departements  en  1868,  describes  the  elab- 
orate interior  arrangement  of  the  termite  mounds  with 
their  myriads  of  rooms,  cells,  nurseries,  storehouses, 
sentry  chambers,  passages,  halls,  arcades,  and  other 
large  or  small  spaces  set  apart  for  particular  purposes 
and  forming  parts  of  a  well-considered  plan.  In  the 
centre  is  what  he  calls  the  "  royal  residence  ^'  with  a 
high-arched  ceiling  resembling  an  old-fashioned  oven. 
Here  the  royal  pair  dwell,  or  rather  are  kept  captive, 
since  the  entrance  is  so  narrow  that  it  is  impossible 
for  them  to  go  out  and  in.  They  are  well  fed  and  as- 
siduously served  by  the  workers,  but  never  leave  the 
apartment  and  are  virtually  prisoners  of  state,  treated 
with  respect,  like  the  mysterious  man  in  the  iron  mask, 
but  nevertheless  restrained  of  their  liberty.  The  pro- 
lific queen  assumes  enormous  dimensions,  becoming  two 
or  three  thousand  times  as  large  as  an  ordinary  termite. 
Adjoining  this  lying-in  room  (for  such  is  its  essential 
character)  are  nurseries  for  rearing  the  young,  chambers 
for  servants  or  attendants  of  the  queen,  barracks  for 
soldiers,  closets  or  cupboards  filled  with  gums,  resin, 
dried  juice  of  plants,  seeds,  fruits,  and  other  edibles 
or  condiments. 

In  the  centre  of  the  termite  mound  is  a  large  space 
with  passages  leading  to  it  from  all  sides,  which,  in 
the  opinion  of  Bettzieh-Beta,  serves  the  purpose  of  a 
forum  or  place  of  public  meetings,  held,  as  he  as- 


PROGRESS  AND  PERFECTIBILITY.  209 

sumes,  for  the  discussion  of  questions  of  general  in- 
terest. Others  maintain  that  it  is  intended  to  promote 
ventilation.* 

Dr.  H.  Ilagen  states  that  some  termites,  in  order  to 
get  at  a  sack  of  meal  standing  on  the  floor  and  effectu- 
ally protected  against  their  direct  encroachments, 
gnawed  a  hole  through  the  ceiling  just  above  the  sack 
and  built  a  tube  downward  through  the  air  until  they 
reached  the  object  of  their  desire.  But  finding  it  impos- 
sible to  carry  the  meal  up  through  this  straight  and 
perpendicular  passage,  they  constructed  another  by  the 
side  of  it  with  a  spiral  ascent  like  that  of  the  campanile 
of  St.  Mark^s  in  Venice.  By  thus  taking  advantage 
of  the  principle  of  the  inclined  plane,  which  plays  such 
an  important  part  in  modern  engineering  and  road- 
making  over  mountains,  they  easily  succeeded  in  secur- 
ing the  meal. 

Blanchard  also  compares  these  insects  to  skilful 
engineers,  and  confirms  the  observations  cf  other  natu- 
ralists as  regards  the  ability  with  which  they  design 
and  construct  tubular  bridges  from  one  point  to  another 
in  the  form  of  an  arch  or  succession  of  arches.  In  the 
cellar  of  the  prefecture  of  La  Eochelle,  in  southern 
France,  they  made  hollow  columns  as  large  as  a  thick 
straw  from  the  ceiling  to  the  floor,  using  them  as  lines 
of  transit  and  transportation  to  the  upper  stories  of 
the  building.  He  adds  that  they  always  take  the  short- 
est cut  to  their  destination  even  when  working  under- 
ground. They  are,  therefore,  suspected  of  sending  out 
explorers  by  night,  who  survey  the  ground  and  indicate 
by  signs  on  the  surface  of  the  earth  the  direction  of 

*  Biichner,  p.  229. 


210  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

the  projected  subterranean  passage.  This  supposition 
is  regarded  by  Biichner  (p.  236)  as  highly  probable. 

Smeathman  describes  the  effect  of  making  a  breach 
in  the  mound  of  the  termites.  Immediately  the  soldiers 
rush  out  in  the  greatest  rage  in  obedience  to  a  signal 
given  by  a  single  sentinel  or  officer,  who  first  appears 
in  order  to  ascertain  the  nature  of  the  attack.  If  the 
disturbance  is  not  renewed  the  soldiers  retire  and  the 
workers  reappear  and  begin  to  repair  the  damages,  only 
a  few  of  the  former  remaining  stationed  here  and 
there  as  a  guard.  If  the  mound  is  again  disturbed,  the 
workers  vanish  and  the  soldiers  come  out  in  force. 
There  seems  to  be  an  exact  assignment  of  duties  to 
each  class,  the  workers  never  fighting  and  the  soldiers 
never  working. 

The  workers  are  undeveloped  females  and  the  sol- 
diers may  be  undeveloped  males,  although  this  is  by  no 
means  certain.  At  any  rate  they  are  both  classified  as 
sexless  and  are  both  blind,  the  lack  of  sight  being  sup- 
plemented by  a  delicate  sense  of  touch,  which,  as  they 
live  in  the  dark,  serves  them  better  than  vision.  They 
are  distinguished  from  each  other  chiefly  by  the  form 
and  armament  of  the  head;  that  of  the  worker  being 
round  and  smooth  and  provided  with  a  mouth  adapted 
to  the  elaboration  of  materials  for  building  purposes, 
while  that  of  the  soldier  is  very  large  and  armed  with 
pincers,  pikes,  or  tridents,  and  long  jaws  with  saws  or 
sabres  serving  as  weapons  for  assault.  The  proportion 
of  soldiers  to  workers  in  a  mound  is  about  one  per  cent, 
so  that  the  standing  armies  are  relatively  much  smaller 
than  those  which  have  so  often  been  a  burden  to  Euro- 
pean powers.  In  other  words,  ninety-nine  hundredths 
of  the  population  devote  themselves  to  industry  and 


PROGRESS  AND  PERFECTIBILITY.  211 

only  one  hundredth  to  arms,  thus  indicating  an  ad- 
vanced state  of  termitic  civilization. 

The  termites  are  as  energetic  and  ingenious  in  their 
destructive  as  in  their  constructive  labours.  Perhaps 
the  most  dangerous  of  these  creatures  (at  least  so  far 
as  we  know)  is  the  Termes  lucifugus  or  light-shunning 
termite,  which  was  introduced  into  Europe  on  exotic 
plants  imported  from  Brazil.  In  southern  France,  espe- 
cially in  La  Eochelle,  Eochefort,  and  Bordeaux,  they 
have  eaten  up  furniture,  caused  wooden  buildings  to 
collapse,  and  ships  of  war  to  fall  to  pieces.  They  enter 
the  foot  of  a  table  through  the  floor  and  gradually  eat 
out  the  whole  inside  of  it,  so  that  it  has  the  appearance 
of  being  perfectly  solid  when  it  is  only  a  mere  shell, 
which  the  slightest  shock  or  pressure  causes  to  crumble 
into  a  heap  of  dust  and  splinters.  In  consuming  the 
corks  of  bottles  they  always  leave  a  thin  layer  at  the 
lower  end  sufficient  to  prevent  the  wine  from  flowing 
out  and  submerging  them.  In  South  America,  India, 
and  Egypt  they  have  been  known  to  destr>)y  whole  vil- 
lages and  compel  the  inhabitants  to  migrate.  Curiously 
enough  in  consuming  a  house  they  spare  the  principal 
pillars,  whose  destruction  would  cause  the  whole  build- 
ing to  fall;  or  when  they  devour  the  inside  of  these 
pillars,  they  fill  the  hollow  with  clay,  which  hardens 
and  renders  them  stronger  than  ever.  This  remarkable 
foresight  contributes  to  their  self-preservation.  But 
how  should  the  insects  know  on  which  pillars  or  col- 
umns the  edifice  mainly  rests  ?  * 

Bastian  \  states  that  the  cities  of  the  termites  in  East 


*  Cf.  Dr.  Hagen,  cited  by  Bttchner,  p.  241. 
f  Die  Volker  des  OestUchen  Indiens. 


212  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

India  are  as  tall  as  a  man,  some  of  them  being  simple 
massive  mounds,  and  others  resembling  a  regular  castle 
with  battlements,  pinnacles,  and  turrets.  In  the  savan- 
nas of  Senegambia  in  western  Africa  the  countless  hills 
of  the  termites  furnish  an  admirable  material,  out  of 
which  the  aborigines  as  well  as  the  canny  Scotch  mission- 
aries construct  their  houses.  They  are  also  made  into 
ovens  by  being  hollowed  out  and  the  interior  plastered 
with  loam.  These  structures  are  relatively  much  larger 
than  any  reared  by  man.  A  pyramid  bearing  the  same 
proportions  to  the  size  of  its  builders  would  be  at  least 
three  thousand  feet  high,  and  a  subterranean  canal 
would  be  three  hundred  feet  in  the  clear.  In  com- 
parison with  them  old  Eoman  and  modern  American 
edifices  and  aqueducts  are  insignificant  affairs.* 

Even  instincts,  which  seem  firmly  rooted  and  are 
regarded  as  characteristic  of  the  class,  are  by  no  means 
so  persistent  as  is  commonly  supposed.  The  individual 
inherits,  but  soon  loses  them  if  they  are  not  brought 
into  early  exercise.  A  duck  or  gosling,  if  reared  in  the 
house  until  it  is  two  or  three  months  old,  has  no 
greater  liking  for  the  water  than  a  chicken,  and  if 
thrown  into  a  pond  will  scramble  out,  showing  signs  of 
great  fear  of  the  element  to  which  its  web-feet  are  par- 
ticularly adapted.  An  artificially  hatched  chicken  does 
not  attach  itself  to  a  hen  more  than  to  any  other  animal, 
but  follows  its  first  associate,  a  child,  a  cat,  or  a  dog. 

Buffon  denies  that  animals  are  susceptible  of  what 
he  calls  "  the  perfectibility  of  the  species."  "  They  are 
to-day,"  he  says,  "what  they  always  have  been,  and 

*  For  facts  and  authorities  see  Btichner's  Aus  dem  Geistesleben 
der  Thiere,  Leipzig,  1896. 


PROGRESS  AND  PERFECTIBILITY.  213 

always  will  be,  and  nothing  more;  because,  as  their 
education  is  purely  individual,  they  can  only  transmit 
to  their  young  what  they  themselves  have  received  from 
their  parents.  Man,  on  the  other  hand,  inherits  the 
culture  of  ages  and  gathers  and  conserves  the  wisdom 
of  successive  generations,  and  may  thus  profit  by  every 
advance  of  the  race,  and,  in  turn,  aid  in  perfecting  it 
more  and  more." 

This  assertion  has  been  repeated  by  scientists  of  the 
old  school  as  though  it  were  an  axiom  of  natural  his- 
tory, instead  of  an  arrogant  anthropocentric  assumption 
refuted  by  scores  of  well-authenticated  facts.  The 
whole  process  of  domestication,  which  is  to  the  lower 
animals  what  civilization  is  to  man,  and  the  possibility 
of  producing  and  propagating  desirable  qualities  in  the 
race,  run  counter  to  Buffon's  theory.  The  value  of  a 
horse's  pedigree  depends  upon  the  transmissibility  of 
distinctive  characteristics  which  were  originally  peculiar 
to  some  individual  horse,  idiosyncrasies  which  com- 
mended themselves  to  man  as  worthy  oi  preservation, 
or  such  as  in  the  natural  struggle  for  existence  would 
assert  and  propagate  themselves. 

If  the  descendants  of  blood-horses  do  not  inherit  the 
individual  training  of  their  sires,  neither  are  the  chil- 
dren of  scholars  or  musicians  born  with  a  knowledge 
of  books  or  the  ability  to  play  on  musical  instruments. 
What  is  inherited  in  both  cases  is  some  particular  dis- 
position or  endowment,  a  superior  aptitude  for  the 
things  in  which  their  progenitors  excelled.  Indeed, 
this  heritage  is  handed  down  in  horses  with  surer  and 
steadier  increase,  or,  at  least,  with  smaller  loss  and 
depreciation  than  in  human  beings,  since  they  are 
mated  with  sole  reference  to  this  result;   and  there  is 


214:  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

no  room  left  for  the  play  of  personal  fancy  and  caprice, 
or  for  social,  sentimental,  or  pecuniary  considerations, 
which  exert  a  baneful  influence  upon  marriage  from  a 
physiological  point  of  view,  and  contribute  to  the  de- 
terioration of  the  race.  This  is  strikingly  perceptible 
in  some  portions  of  Europe,  where  the  struggle  for 
existence,  and  especially  for  high  social  position,  is  ex- 
ceedingly intense,  and  a  large  dower  suffices  to  cover  up 
all  mental  and  physical  deficiencies  in  the  bride. 

The  scientific  swine-breeder  keeps  genealogical 
tables  of  his  pigs,  and  is  as  jealous  of  any  taint  in  a  pure 
porcine  strain  as  any  prince  of  the  blood  is  of  plebeian 
contamination.  In  both  cases  the  vitiation  bars  succes- 
sion, the  one  condition  of  which  is  purity  of  lineage. 
It  is  by  the  selection  not  only  of  the  finest  stock,  but 
also  of  the  choicest  individuals  for  breeding,  that  ani- 
mals are  "  progressively  improved  "  both  bodily  and  in- 
tellectually. This  is,  perhaps,  most  clearly  observable 
in  hunting  dogs  and  race  horses,  which  have  under- 
gone quite  remarkable  modifications  within  the  pres- 
ent century  owing  to  the  extraordinary  pains  taken 
to  develop  and  perfect  their  peculiar  characteristics. 
In  some  instances  unusual  births  or  freaks  of  nature 
are  preserved,  and  by  persistently  propagating  them- 
selves form  the  starting  point  of  new  species.  A 
striking  example  of  this  perpetuation  of  individual 
peculiarities  is  the  short-legged  and  long-backed  Ancon 
sheep,  a  comparatively  recent  product  of  Nature  ren- 
dered permanent  by  the  care  of  man.  A  pointer,  grey- 
hound, or  collie  inherits  and  transmits  to  its  offspring 
not  only  race  attributes,  but  also  acquired  aptitudes 
in  the  same  manner  and  to  the  same  degree  as  a  human 
being  does  who  is  distinguished  for  some  special  faculty. 


PROGRESS  AND  PERFECTIBILITY.  215 

There  are  prodigies  of  dogs  which  do  not  beget  prodi- 
gies of  puppies,  just  as  there  are  men  of  genius  whose 
children  are  by  no  means  eminent  for  their  intellectual 
endowments. 

If  the  conceptual  world  of  the  lower  animals  is 
limited  and  fragmentary,  so  is  that  of  savages  and  of 
ignorant  and  uncultivated  men,  who  Live  for  the  most 
part  in  the  present  and  the  immediate  past,  and  have 
a  relatively  narrow  range  of  thoughts  and  experiences. 
Long-lived  animals,  such  as  parrots,  ravens,  and  ele- 
phants, have  an  advantage  over  short-lived  animals  in 
the  development  of  intelligence.  Civilized  man,  how- 
ever, not  only  lives  his  own  individual  life,  and  profits, 
like  other  animals,  from  the  wisdom  of  his  parents 
and  the  influences  of  his  environment,  but  also,  by 
means  of  written  records,  lives  the  life  of  the  race,  of 
which  he  enjoys  the  selectest  fruits  garnered  in  history. 

It  must  also  be  borne  in  mind  that  dogs  are  and 
always  have  been  bred  for  special  purposes,  such  as  point- 
ing, retrieving,  running,  watching,  and  biting,  but  not 
for  general  intelligence.  Mr.  Galton,  who  calls  atten- 
tion to  this  fact,  suggests  that  it  would  be  interest- 
ing as  a  psychological  experiment  to  mate  the  cleverest 
dogs  generation  after  generation,  breeding  and  educat- 
ing them  solely  for  intellectual  power  and  disregarding 
every  other  consideration. 

In  order  to  carry  out  this  plan  to  perfection  and  to 
realize  all  the  possibilities  involved  in  such  a  compre- 
hensive scheme,  it  would  be  necessary  to  devise  some 
system  of  signs  by  which  dogs  would  be  able  to  com- 
municate their  ideas  more  fully  and  more  clearly  than 
they  can  do  at  present,  both  to  each  other  and  to  man. 
That  the  invention  of  such  a  language  is  not  impossi- 


216  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

ble  is  evident  from  what  has  been  already  achieved 
in  the  training  of  dogs  for  exhibition,  as  well  as  from 
the  extent  to  which  they  have  learned  to  understand 
human  speech  by  mere  association  with  man.  Prof. 
A.  Graham  Bell  believes  that  they  may  be  taught  to 
pronounce  words,  and  is  now  making  scientific  experi- 
ments in  this  direction.  The  same  opinion  was  ex- 
pressed two  centuries  ago  by  no  less  an  authority  than 
Leibnitz,  who  adduced  some  startling  facts  in  support 
of  it.  The  value  of  such  a  language  as  a  means  of  en- 
larging the  animal's  sphere  of  thought  and  power  of 
conception,  and  of  giving  a  higher  development  to  its 
intellectual  faculties,  is  incalculable. 

Every  dog  trained  as  a  hunter  or  herder  is  a  special- 
ist, and  is  prized  for  one  fine  capacity  attained  in  some 
degree  at  the  expense  of  mental  proportion  and  sym- 
metry; in  miscellaneous  matters  outside  of  his  province 
he  may  be  easily  surpassed  by  any  underbred  and  mon- 
grel but  many-sided  village  cur.  Modern  scholarship 
shows  a  like  tendency  to  psychical  alogotrophy  or  one- 
sided intellectual  growth.  As  science  deepens  its  re- 
searches, each  department  of  investigation  becomes 
more  distinct,  and  the  toiler  in  the  mines  of  knowledge 
is  forced  to  confine  his  labours  to  a  single  lode  if  he 
would  exhaust  the  treasures  it  contains.  He  sees  clearly 
so  far  as  his  lantern  casts  its  rays;  but  all  outside  of 
this  small  luminous  circle  is  dense  darkness. 

If  a  race  of  superior  beings  had  taken  charge  of 
man's  education  for  thousands  of  years  and  conducted 
it  on  the  same  principle  as  that  which  has  guided  us 
in  domesticating  and  utilizing  the  lower  animals,  what 
maimed  specimens  of  humanity  would  have  been  the 
result!      Slavery  has  always  tended  to  produce  this 


PROGRESS  AND  PERFECTIBILITY.  217 

effect;  but  the  slave,  however  degraded  his  condition, 
speaks  the  same  language  as  his  master,  thereby  profit- 
ing from  his  intercourse  with  those  who  are  placed  over 
him,  and  sharing  in  the  general  progress  of  society 
more  fully  than  any  dumb  animal  could  do. 

The  influence  of  domestication  on  the  mental  de- 
velopment of  animals  depends  upon  the  purposes  which 
the  domesticator  has  in  view.  If  he  regards  them  mere- 
ly as  forms  of  food,  and  his  sole  aim  is  to  increase  the 
amount  of  their  adipose  tissue  and  edible  substance 
and  thus  get  the  maximum  of  meat  out  of  them,  then 
domestication  tends  to  stupefy  them.  The  intellectual 
training  of  the  pig  would  naturally  diminish  the  quan- 
tity of  lard  it  would  produce.  So  far  as  man  is  con- 
cerned, this  latter  function  is  the  chief  end  of  the 
porker's  existence,  and  it  must  not  be  tried  and  found 
wanting  in  this  respect,  whatever  may  be  its  mental 
deficiencies.  It  must  be  fat-bodied  whet.ier  it  be  fat- 
witted  or  not,  and  the  natural  qualities  which  do  not 
contribute  to  its  gross  weight  and  enhance  its  ultimate 
value  as  victuals  are  systematically  discouraged  and 
depressed. 

In  view  of  the  treatment  that  the  pig  has  received 
for  centuries  at  the  hands  of  man,  it  is  remarkable  that 
the  animal  has  retained  so  much  of  its  original  cun- 
ning and  love  of  cleanliness  as  it  now  possesses.  That 
a  creature  so  fond  of  bathing  in  pure  running  water 
should  be  condemned  to  a  filthy  sty  is  an  act  of  uncon- 
scious cruelty  discreditable  to  human  discernment.  If 
the  sow  that  has  been  washed  returns  to  her  wallow- 
ing in  the  mire,  it  is  as  a  last  resort  in  hot  weather;  she 
would  much  prefer  a  clear  pond  or  limpid  stream  if  she 
could  get  access  to  it. 


218  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Being  fed  and  protected  by  its  owner  in  its  domestic 
state,  the  hog  no  longer  needs  to  exercise  the  faculties 
which  were  essential  to  the  self-preservation  of  its 
wild  progenitors.  The  stimulus  arising  from  the  strug- 
gle for  existence  ceases,  and,  as  it  is  reared  solely  to  be 
eaten,  its  association  with  man  does  not  call  forth  any 
new  powers.  In  China  and  Polynesia,  where  the  dog 
is  esteemed  chiefly  as  food,  it  is  a  sluggish  and  stupid 
beast.  On  the  other  hand,  the  pig  can  be  trained  to 
hunt,  and  not  only  acquires  great  fondness  for  the 
sport,  but  also  shows  extraordinary  sagacity  in  the  pur- 
suit of  game.  It  has  an  uncommonly  keen  scent,  and 
can  be  taught  to  point  better  than  the  pointer.  Curi- 
ously enough,  when  the  pig  is  used  for  hunting  pur- 
poses, the  dogs,  usually  so  eager  for  the  chase,  sullenly 
retire  from  the  field  and  refuse  to  associate  with  their 
bristly  competitor  in  venery.  Possibly  the  hereditary 
and  ineradicable  enmity  between  the  dog  and  hog  as 
domestic  animals  may  be  a  survival  of  the  fierce  an- 
tipathy which  is  known  to  exist  between  the  wolf  and 
the  wild  boar.  In  Burmah  the  ringed  snake  is  trained 
for  the  chase,  and  is  especially  serviceable  in  flushing 
jungle-cock,  since  the  reptile  can  penetrate  the  thickest 
underbrush,  where  it  would  be  impossible  for  a  dog  or 
a  falcon  to  go. 

The  tamability  of  an  animal  is  simply  its  capability 
of  adapting  itself  to  new  relations  in  life,  and  depends 
partly  on  its  mental  endowments,  but  still  more  upon 
its  moral  character.  It  is  quite  as  much  a  matter  of 
temperament  and  social  disposition  as  of  quickness  of 
understanding.  The  elephant,  dog,  and  horse  among 
quadrupeds,  the  beaver  among  rodents,  and  the  daw 
and  raven  among  birds,  are,  for  this  reason,  most  easily 


PROGRESS  AND  PERFECTIBILITY.  219 

tamed,  and  show  the  most  marked  and  rapid  improve- 
ment in  consequence  of  their  daily  intercourse  with 
man.  Intellectual  acuteness  without  the  social  affec- 
tions and  kindred  moral  qualities  rather  resists  than 
facilitates  domestication.  Of  all  domestic  animals  the 
cat  was  the  most  difficult  to  tame,  and  it  needed  the 
patience  and  persistence  so  strongly  characteristic  of 
the  ancient  Egyptians,  sustained  hy  religious  supersti- 
tion, in  order  to  accomplish  this  result.  Even  now  the 
cat,  although  extremely  fond  of  its  home  and  capable 
of  considerable  attachment  to  persons,  has  never  been 
reduced  to  strict  servitude  and  become  the  valet  of  man 
like  the  dog,  but  has  always  remained  to  a  certain 
degree  what  it  originally  was,  a  prowling  beast  of  prey. 

Barking  in  dogs  is  a  habit  due  to  domestication. 
The  wild  dog  never  barks,  but  only  howls,  like  the 
Himalayan  buansu,  or  merely  whines,  like  the  East 
Indian  colsum;  and  the  domestic  dog  i  everts  from 
barking  to  howling  when  it  relapses  into  its  primitive 
state.  Wagging  the  tail  is  another  mode  of  expression 
which  the  dog  has  acquired  through  association  with 
man.  It  is  well  known,  too,  that  a  dog  which  has  been 
reared  by  a  cat  adopts  many  of  the  habits  of  its  foster- 
mother,  such  as  cleaning  itself  with  its  paw;  by  con- 
tinuously pairing  such  dogs  and  rearing  them  under 
like  influences  it  would  be  possible  to  produce  a  canine 
species  with  feline  traits,  which  should  become  perma- 
nent and  transmissible. 

A  recent  writer.  Dr.  Leopold  Schutz,  professor  in 
the  theological  seminary  at  Trier,  who  may  be  taken 
as  an  extreme  representative  of  the  old  orthodox  school 
of  zoopsychologists,  maintains  that  animals  do  not 
think,  reflect,  form  purposes,  or  act  with  premeditation 
15 


220  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

of  any  land,  have  no  freedom,  no  choice,  no  emotional 
or  intellectual  life  of  their  own,  but  that  a  higher  power 
performs  all  these  operations  through  them  as  cunning 
pieces  of  mechanism.  The  bird  sings,  according  to  this 
theory,  without  any  personal  pleasure  or  participation 
in  its  song;  it  sings  at  a  certain  time  and  can  not  help 
it,  nor  is  it  able  to  sing  at  any  other  time.  The  living 
cuckoo  is  as  automatic  as  the  wooden  cuckoo  of  a 
Black  Forest  clock,  and  under  the  same  mechanical 
compulsion  to  sing  its  song  when  the  appointed  hour 
arrives.  Altum,  in  his  book  on  bird  life  (Der  Vogel 
und  sein  Leben,  Miinster,  1868),  infers  from  the  fact 
that  a  bird  sings  more  in  the  pairing  season  than  at 
other  seasons  of  the  year,  that  its  song  is  a  "  natural 
necessity,"  in  which  it  takes  no  individual  pleasure. 
But  this  conclusion  by  no  means  follows  from  the 
premises.  The  song  is  a  means  to  an  end,  and  has  for 
its  final  object  sexual  attraction  and  selection.  One 
would  surely  not  be  justified  in  inferring  that  a  woman 
who  dresses  well,  chiefly  in  order  to  gratify  her  husband 
or  her  lover,  finds  no  individual  aesthetic  satisfaction 
in  a  fine  gown;  or  that  a  man  goes  a-wooing  from 
"  natural  necessity,"  and  gets  no  entertainment  out  of 
courtship. 

Prof.  Schutz's  doctrine  that  animals  are  mere  pup- 
pets, whose  movements  are  determined  by  the  direct 
intervention  of  higher  powers,  seems  to  have  been 
derived  from  what  is  recorded  of  the  relations  of  these 
creatures  to  holy  men  in  the  legends  of  the  saints, 
rather  than  from  a  scientific  study  of  the  book  of 
Nature;  his  point  of  view  is  not  that  of  the  zoopsy- 
chologist,  but  that  of  the  hagiologist. 

The  chief  difficulty  attending  the  investigation  of 


PROGRESS  AND  PERFECTIBILITY.  221 

mental  processes  in  animals  is  that  they  can  not  express 
themselves  in  human  language  and  explain  to  us  their 
thoughts  and  feelings  and  the  motives  underlying  their 
conduct.  We  are  thus  liable  to  misinterpret  their 
actions  and  deny  them  many  endowments  which  they 
really  possess,  just  as  the  first  explorers  of  new  countries 
fail  to  discover  in  savages  ideas  and  conceptions  which 
are  afterward  found  to  characterize  them  in  a  remark- 
able degree. 

"We  have  happily  rid  ourselves  somewhat  of  the 
ethnocentric  prepossessions  which  led  the  Greeks,  and 
still  lead  the  Chinese,  to  regard  all  other  peoples  as 
outside  barbarians;  but  our  perceptions  are  still  ob- 
scured by  anthropocentric  prejudice  which  prevents 
us  from  fully  appreciating  the  intelligence  of  the  lower 
animals  and  recognising  any  psychical  analogy  between 
these  humble  kinsmen  and  our  exalted  selves. 


CHAPTER  YII. 

IDEATIOl^r   IN   ANIMALS   AND   IfEN. 

Prantl's  doctrine  of  "  time  sense  "  as  a  specifically  human  endow- 
ment. Weakness  of  this  theory.  Examples  of  time  sense  in 
animals.  Their  social  instincts  and  moral  sentiments.  Stand- 
ard of  animal  virtue  according  to  Spinoza.  Animal  herd  and 
savage  tribe.  Criminal  procedure  of  animals  against  delin- 
quent members  of  the  herd  or  flock.  Civic  life  of  ants  and 
bees.  Anarchism  and  barbarism  in  the  hives.  Depraving  in- 
fluence of  alcoliol  on  bees.  Agricultural  ants.  African  driver 
ants.  "Cattle-lifting"  ants.  Formican  slaveholders.  Vol- 
ume of  brain  in  hymenoptera.  Long  and  helpless  infancy  of 
ants.  Altruism  in  animals.  Dr.  McCook  on  honey  ants. 
Darwin's  experiment.  Use  of  tools  by  animals.  Mechanical 
skill  of  trapdoor  spiders.  Elephants  as  dam  builders.  Use 
of  implements  by  crows  and  cormorants.  Wine-making  apes 
in  China.  Monkeys  as  miners.  Use  of  fire  as  an  index  of  civ- 
ilization. The  logical  faculty  in  monkeys.  The  soko  as  a  hu- 
morist.   Idea  of  personal  property  in  animals. 

The  late  Prof,  von  Prantl  *  takes  the  ground  that 
the  lower  animals  are  endowed  with  moral  and  intel- 
lectual faculties,  but  adds:  "  They  are  destitute  of  any 
logical  apprehension  and  power  of  abstraction;  for 
while  they  comprehend  objects  and  their  optical,  acous- 

*  In  a  paper  on  Reformgedanken  zur  Logik,  read  before  the 
Royal  Bavarian  Academy  of  Sciences,  and  printed  in  its  Proceed- 
ings for  March  6,  1875. 

222 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  223 

tic,  and  other  efficient  qualities  in  a  certain  abiding 
manner,  they  have  no  conception  of  substance  or  at- 
tribute, of  coexistence  or  succession.  Animals  perceive 
also  an  actual  causal  connection,  and  are  therefore 
capable  of  drawing  causative  conclusions,  reasoning 
forward  and  backward,  from  cause  to  effect  and  from 
effect  to  cause,  but  not  capable  of  a  logical  deduction; 
they  seek  a  cause,  but  not  a  logical  ground  or  reason, 
and  are,  by  virtue  of  such  endowment,  wary  and  cau- 
tious, but  without  foresight "  (behutsam  und  vorsichtig, 
aber  ohne  Voraussicht).  In  other  words,  "  animals  think 
without  logic,  but  not  therefore  illogically." 

Again,  "  in  order  to  formulate  precisely  the  distinc- 
tion between  man  and  beast,'^  he  sums  up  this  differ- 
ence in  the  succinct  statement,  "man  has  time-sense." 
Beasts  have  "  space-sense,"  or  the  "  sensual  perception 
of  expansive  being,"  but  not  "  time-sense;  that  is  to  say, 
the  brain  activity  of  man  is  competent  to  comprehend 
also  pure  succession  as  such,  and  the  pure  intensity  of 
occurrence  in  general." 

In  proof  of  this  proposition  Prantl  states  that  "  man 
can  count."  Even  without  the  use  of  names  or  numerals 
"he  can  fix  the  succession  of  days  by  marks,  or  ex- 
press the  number  of  objects  lying  before  him  gesticula- 
tively  with  his  fingers."  This  "  sense  of  continuity, 
denied  to  the  whole  world  of  lower  animals,"  ren- 
ders man  "  conscious  of  being  the  same  in  a  later 
as  in  a  former  time,"  and  thus  endows  him  with  "  im- 
mutable ego-consciousness,  or  Kanfs  transcendental 
apperception."  It  enables  him  to  look  before  and 
after,  to  bind  together  the  past  and  the  future,  and  thus 
to  create  law  and  order,  domestic,  social,  and  political 
institutions,  ethics,  art,  religion,  science,  and  history, 


224  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

and  to  make  external  things  serve  his  purposes  and 
supply  his  wants.  "Man,  and  man  only,  fabricates 
weapons  and  tools,  kindles  fire,  plants  seeds  in  the  earth, 
and  is  alone  capable  of  self-renunciation  and  suicide." 
"By  virtue  of  this  continuity  of  his  self -consciousness 
and  his  look  into  the  future,  he  transforms  the  realities 
around  him  and  makes  them  minister  to  his  ideals." 
The  sole  and  ultimate  source  of  all  these  higher  de- 
velopments and  ideal  acquisitions  of  humanity,  individ- 
ual, social,  political,  industrial,  and  artistic,  is  to  be 
sought  in  "  the  far-reaching  and  fundamental  postulate 
that  man  is  endowed  with  time-sense." 

For  this  reason  man  alone  is  able  to  distinguish 
between  the  subjective  and  the  objective,  to  conceive 
of  the  subject  as  an  object,  and  to  apprehend  mathe- 
matical truths  and  relations,  which  are  purely  ideal,  as 
real.  "It  would  be  ridiculous  to  ascribe  mathematics 
to  animals;  nevertheless  the  labours  of  the  bee  and 
of  the  spider  excite  astonishment;  but  inasmuch  as, 
with  genuinely  animal  limitations,  they  always  appear 
in  a  definite  geometrical  form,  they  show  that  they  are 
not  products  of  spontaneous  mathematical  thinking." 

Prantl  also  denies  that  expressions  of  sorrow,  re- 
morse, or  gratitude  on  the  part  of  animals  furnish  any 
evidence  that  they  act  under  the  impulse  of  moral  ideas, 
but  interprets  them  as  having  reference  to "  their  own 
well-being  or  comfort.  To  talk  of  the  "  art-instinct  of 
animals"  is,  he  thinks,  a  mere  confusion  of  terms, 
"  since  we  demand  of  art  that  it  shall  realize  an  idea." 
Still,  after  all  his  metaphysical  distinctions,  he  admits 
that  the  essential  nature  of  man  as  distinguished  from 
that  of  the  beast  is  "  only  the  result  of  a  progressive 
upward  evolution."    If  this  conclusion  be  correct,  and 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  225 

it  is  all  that  the  most  advanced  zoopsychologist  has  ever 
claimed,  then  the  distances  (Ahstdnde)  between  man 
and  beast  are  not  impassable,  and  even  "  human  speech '' 
(die  menschliche  Sprache)  is  but  a  higher  development  of 
"  animal  utterance  "  (die  thierische  Kundgebung), 

The  weak  point  of  these  speculations  concerning 
the  mental  powers  of  animals  is  that  they  are  too  ex- 
clusively metaphysical,  constituting  a  logical  and  sys- 
tematic exposition  of  conceptions  or  notions  without 
that  accurate  and  exhaustive  observation  of  facts  which 
no  acuteness  of  analysis  and  no  vigorous  process  of 
pure  thinking  can  supply.  Not  only  is  Prantl  ignorant 
of  the  habits  and  aptitudes  of  animals,  denying  them 
capacities  which  they  are  known  to  possess,  but  he  is 
liable  to  an  opposite  error,  equally  fatal  to  his  theories, 
in  his  tendency  to  ascribe  to  the  human  race  as  a 
whole  faculties  which  are  characteristic  of  man  only 
in  a  high  state  of  civilization.  He  ignores  the  savage 
and  the  boor,  and  compares  beasts  with  the  most  culti- 
vated and  most  highly  developed  human  beings,  over- 
looking the  long  period  which  man  existed  on  the  earth 
before  he  even  learned  how  to  chip  flints. 

As  to  the  "ideal-sense,"  upon  which  Prantl  lays 
peculiar  stress,  there  are  low  tribes  in  which  it  is  wholly 
wanting,  and  which  are  as  destitute  of  historical  annals 
as  any  herd  of  apes.  How  much  knowledge  of  the  past 
may  be  transmitted  from  generation  to  generation  by 
tradition  in  a  community  of  monkeys  it  is  impossible 
to  determine.  The  amount  of  information  thus  pre- 
served and  accumulated  in  simian  hordes  is  probably 
very  small  and  exceedingly  vague,  since  even  human 
hordes,  not  native  to  the  countries  they  inhabit,  soon 
lose  all  recollection  of  the  early  migrations  of  their 


326  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

ancestors,  and  all  traditions  concerning  the  cradle  of 
their  race.  This  is  why  savages  always  regard  them- 
selves as  autochthones,  even  in  cases  in  which  it  can  be 
clearly  proved  that  they  are  not  aboriginal  to  the  soil, 
and  that  their  immigration  is  of  comparatively  recent 
date. 

There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  "time-sense,'' 
which  Prantl  claims  to  be  the  exclusive  attribute  of  man, 
and  from  which  he  derives  the  superior  mental  evolu- 
tion and  equipment  of  the  human  race,  is  wholly  lack- 
ing in  the  lower  animals.  Every  creature  endowed 
with  personal  consciousness  and  memory  must  know 
that  it  is  the  same  being  to-day  that  it  was  yesterday, 
or,  in  other  words,  that  it  exists  in  time.  The  pos- 
session of  this  knowledge  does  not  imply  the  possi- 
bility of  indulging  in  philosophical  reflections  about 
it  any  more  than  the  possession  of  thoughts  necessarily 
involves  the  power  of  thinking  about  thoughts,  al- 
though it  would  be  rash  to  affirm  that  animals  may  not 
be  capable  of  giving  themselves  up  to  meditation  by  re- 
calling mental  impressions  and  making  them  objects 
of  thought. 

Time-sense  is  very  highly  developed  in  domestic 
fowls  and  many  wild  birds,  as  well  as  in  dogs,  horses, 
and  other  mammals,  which  keep  an  accurate  account 
of  days  of  the  week  and  hours  of  the  day,  and  have, 
at  least,  a  limited  idea  of  numerical  succession  and 
logical  sequence.  A  Polish  artist,  residing  in  Rome, 
had  an  exceedingly  intelligent  and  faithful  terrier, 
which,  as  he  was  obliged  to  go  on  a  journey,  he  left 
with  a  friend,  to  whom  the  dog  was  strongly  attached. 
Day  and  night  the  terrier  went  to  the  station  to  meet 
every  train,  carefully  observing  and  remembering  the 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  227 

time  of  their  arrival,  and  never  missing  one.  Mean- 
while he  became  so  depressed  that  he  refused  to  eat, 
and  would  have  died  of  starvation,  if  the  friend  had 
not  telegraphed  to  his  master  to  return  at  once  if  he 
wished  to  find  the  animal  alive.  Here  we  have  a  strik- 
ing exhibition  of  time-sense  as  well  as  an  example  of 
all-absorbing  affection  and  self-renunciation  likely  to 
result  in  suicide. 

Love,  gratitude,  devotion,  the  sense  of  duty,  and 
the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  are  proverbially  strong  in 
dogs,  and  only  a  "hard-shell^'  metaphysician,  who 
neither  knows  nor  cares  anything  about  them,  would 
venture  to  deny  them  all  moral  qualities,  and  to  assert 
that  they  are  governed  solely  by  a  regard  for  their  own 
individual  well-being.  There  are  also  many  apparently 
well-authenticated  instances  of  animals  deliberately  tak- 
ing their  own  livej;  and  without  too  credulously  accept- 
ing anecdotes  of  this  sort,  in  which  it  is  difficult  to  de- 
termine whether  the  creature  was  a  felo-de-se  or  the 
victim  of  an  accident,  there  is  no  pyschological  reason 
for  rejecting  them  as  old  wives'  fables. 

Scorpions  and  serpents  are  especially  prone  to  sting 
themselves  to  death  when  kept  in  close  confinement. 
Some  naturalists  maintain  that  these  creatures  grow 
crazy  before  committing  the  fatal  act;  but  it  is  difficult 
to  determine  whether  the  wounds  are  self-inflicted  for 
the  purpose  of  putting  an  end  to  their  existence  or  are 
the  result  of  attempts  to  defend  themselves  against  an 
imaginary  enemy.  Mr.  Holden,  of  the  Lick  Observatory, 
reports  the  case  of  a  rattlesnake,  which,  after  several 
unsuccessful  efforts  to  escape  from  captivity,  bit  itself 
to  death  "  in  a  most  deliberate  manner."  He  is  con- 
vinced that  the  suicide  was  intentional. 


228  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

According  to  Spinoza,  benevolence  in  animals  con- 
sists in  the  exercise  of  friendly  feelings  toward  their 
kind,  and  this  is  all  that  we  have  a  right  to  demand 
of  them.  A  good  cat,  for  example,  is  a  cat  that  is  good 
to  her  kittens,  however  cruel  she  may  be  to  birds  and 
mice.  Indeed,  her  goodness,  from  a  feline  as  well  as 
from  a  human  point  of  view,  is  in  direct  proportion 
to  her  destructiveness  of  the  smaller  rodents.  A  like 
standard  of  virtue  prevails  among  low  races  of  men, 
and  constitutes  the  highest  ideal  of  tribal  ethics.  The 
best  man  among  barbarians  is  the  one  who  is  most 
terrible  to  their  foes,  and  can  put  the  greatest  number 
of  them  to  death  in  the  shortest  time.  Such  manifesta- 
tions of  love  of  kin  and  love  of  country  are  only  en- 
largements of  self-love;  and  it  is  a  long  way  from  this 
primitive  form  of  egotism  to  universal  philanthropy, 
and  to  the  still  broader  benevolence  which  Buddhism 
inculcates  toward  all  sentient  creatures.  One  is  in- 
clined to  pardon  the  gruff  cynicism  of  Dr.  Johnson 
in  denouncing  patriotism  as  "  the  last  refuge  of  scoun- 
drels," when  one  sees  how  much  individual  selfishness 
finds  a  covert  under  this  fine-sounding  word,  and  what 
fierceness  of  interdynastic  and  international  strife  it 
is  made  to  provoke  and  to  palliate. 

Not  only  the  social  instincts,  but  also  the  moral 
sentiments  growing  out  of  social  relations,  are  common 
to  man  and  to  beast.  It  is  evident  that  germs  of  moral 
ideas  and  perceptions  of  moral  obligations  enter  into  the 
conjugal  unions  of  beasts,  and  impart  a  certain  stability 
and  sacredness  to  these  ties.  Many  animals  are  strict 
monogamists,  and  have  thus  attained  what  Aryan  civ- 
ilization now  generally  accepts  as  the  highest  and  purest 
form  of  sexual  affection  and  association.    "With  beasts. 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  229 

too,  as  with  men,  it  is  the  male  which  scruples  least  at 
trangressing  the  monogamous  principle,  and  makes  light 
of  this  breach  of  fidelity,  treating  it  as  a  pardonable 
peccadillo. 

The  mandarin  duck  is  proverbial  for  conjugal  faith- 
fulness, and  the  Chinese  are  accustomed  to  carry  a 
pair  of  these  fowls  in  bridal  processions,  as  an  emblem 
of  connubial  love  and  an  example  of  constancy  for  the 
newly  wedded  couple.  Canaries  are  also  characterized 
by  the  same  virtue,  and  the  attempt  to  force  them  into 
bigamy  by  keeping  one  male  and  two  females  in  the 
same  cage  is  uniformly  destructive  of  domestic  bliss, 
and  frequently  fatal  to  the  young.  Jealousies  are  quite 
sure  to  arise  in  consequence  of  a  preference  of  the  male 
for  one  of  his  mates;  and  the  consort  that  feels  ag- 
grieved by  marital  neglect  will  take  every  opportunity 
to  avenge  herself  by  pecking  and  pestering  her  favoured 
rival,  and  destroying  her  nest  with  its  coi  tents  of  eggs 
or  callow  brood.  Even  the  young  which  are  reared 
under  such  circumstances  are  far  inferior  in  beauty 
and  vigour,  as  well  as  in  numbers,  to  the  offspring  of 
a  peaceful  monogamous  canary  household. 

"Whether  the  family  may  be  the  originary  nucleus  of 
the  tribe,  or,  as  is  more  probable,  may  have  been  de- 
veloped through  a  process  of  differentiation  out  of  a 
primitive  community,  whose  members  lived  in  sexual 
promiscuity,*  the  impulse  to  herd,  as  well  as  the  pur- 
poses it  subserves,  are  the  same  in  savages  and  in 
beasts.    Wolves  hunt  in  packs;  cattle,  horses,  and  sheep 


*  We  may  state  that  Westermarck,  in  The  History  of  Human 
Marriage,  takes  a  different  view,  but  does  not  settle  the  question 
definitely. 


230  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

unite  for  mutual  protection;  and  this  tendency  remains 
even  after  their  domestication,  when  it  is  no  longer 
essential  to  their  safety,  and  becomes,  as  in  man,  a 
purely  social  feeling.  Birds  of  passage  assemble  for 
their  annual  or  semiannual  migrations,  and  separate 
into  families  as  soon  as  they  have  reached  their  destina- 
tion; still  preserving,  however,  their  larger  and  laxer 
social  organization  as  "  birds  of  a  feather,"  which  en- 
ables them  to  "flock  together"  again  with  facility, 
whenever  the  general  interest  requires  united  action 
of  any  kind.  This  sense  of  community  is  especially 
strong  in  rooks  and  storks,  which  seem  to  have  a  regular 
system  of  government,  by  means  of  which  they  enforce 
discipline,  reproving  and  correcting  deviations  from 
their  common  standard  of  rectitude,  and  even  inflicting 
capital  punishment  for  certain  transgressions.  In 
such  cases  the  family  ceases  to  exercise  jurisdiction 
over  its  own  members,  and  recognises  the  superior  penal 
authority  of  the  commonwealth. 

The  instances  recorded  of  animals  holding  courts 
of  justice  and  laying  penalties  upon  offenders  are  too 
numerous  and  well  authenticated  to  admit  of  any  doubt. 
This  kind  of  criminal  procedure  has  been  observed 
particularly  among  rooks,  ravens,  storks,  flamingoes, 
martins,  sparrows,  and  occasionally  among  some  gre- 
garious quadrupeds.  It  is  as  clearly  established  as 
human  testimony  can  establish  anything  that  these 
creatures  have  a  lively  sense  of  what  is  lawful  or  allow- 
able in  the  conduct  of  the  individual,  so  far  as  it  may 
affect  the  character  of  the  flock  or  herd,  and  are  quick 
to  resent  and  punish  any  act  of  a  single  member  that 
may  disgrace  or  injure  the  community  to  which  he 
belongs. 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  231 

Sometimes  an  irascible  husband  may  take  the  law 
into  his  own  hands,  and  summarily  avenge  himself 
on  a  faithless  wife  and  her  guilty  paramour  without 
bringing  the  case  before  a  general  assembly  of  his  kind. 
Usually,  however,  it  is  the  whole  body  which,  after 
due  deliberation,  pronounces  and  executes  judgment 
and  maintains  the  majesty  of  the  law.  The  penalty 
does  not  always  involve  the  forfeiture  of  life,  but  varies 
in  rigour  according  to  the  turpitude  of  the  offence; 
the  culprit  being  often  condemned  to  a  severe  castiga- 
tion,  after  which  he  resumes  his  position  in  society 
a  sadder  and  wiser  member  of  it. 

A  general  assembly  of  storks  was  held  on  June  25, 
1896,  on  the  meadows  of  Enzheim  in  Lower  Alsatia, 
and  remained  in  session  more  than  forty-eight  hours. 
On  the  first  day  there  were  one  hundred  and  ninety-two 
storks  present,  and  on  the  second  day  one  hundred  and 
eighty-nine.  It  w^as  evidently  a  very  lively  conference 
and  their  chatter  could  be  heard  at  a  great  distance, 
but  there  was  nothing  to  indicate  whether  the  meet- 
ing was  simply  a  social  reunion  or  whether  the  delibera- 
tions were  of  a  judicial  or  political  character.  At  any 
rate,  it  was  not  accidental,  and  clearly  had  some  definite 
purpose  in  view. 

Dr.  Edmonson  states  that  the  hooded  crows  in  the 
Shetland  Islands  hold  regular  assizes  at  stated  periods, 
and  usually  in  the  same  place.  When  there  is  a  full 
docket,  a  week  or  more  is  spent  in  trying  the  cases;  at 
other  times,  a  single  day  suffices  for  the  judicial  pro- 
ceedings. The  capitally  condemned  are  killed  on  the 
spot. 

The  owner  of  a  house  near  Berlin  found  a  single 
egg  in  the  nest  of  a  pair  of  storks,  built  on  the  chimney, 


232  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

and  substituted  for  it  a  goose's  egg,  which  in  due  time 
was  hatched,  and  produced  a  gosling  instead  of  the 
expected  storkling.  The  male  bird  was  thrown  into 
the  greatest  excitement  by  this  event,  and  finally  flew 
away.  The  female,  however,  remained  on  the  nest, 
and  continued  to  care  for  the  changeling  as  though  it 
were  her  own  offspring.  On  the  morning  of  the  fourth 
day  the  male  reappeared  accompanied  by  nearly  five 
hundred  storks,  which  held  a  mass  meeting  in  an  ad- 
jacent field.  The  assembly,  we  are  informed,  was  ad- 
dressed by  several  speakers,  each  orator  posting  himself 
on  the  same  spot  before  beginning  his  harangue.  These 
deliberations  and  discussions  occupied  nearly  the  entire 
forenoon,  when  suddenly  the  meeting  broke  up,  and 
all  the  storks  pounced  upon  the  unfortunate  female 
and  her  supposititious  young  one,  killed  them  both, 
and,  after  destroying  the  polluted  nest,  took  wing  and 
departed,  and  were  never  seen  there  again. 

It  happens  occasionally  that  the  confidence  of  the 
male  stork  in  the  virtue  of  his  spouse  is  too  strong  to 
be  shaken  even  by  the  presence  of  such  questionable 
progeny;  or,  if  he  suspects  her  of  frailty,  he  deems 
it  best  to  condone  the  fault.  They  then  unite  in  ex- 
terminating the  bastard  brood,  and  prudently  keep  the 
mysterious  episode  of  ciconian  domestic  life  to  them- 
selves. 

Prof.  Carl  Vogt  tells  the  story  of  a  pair  of  storks 
which  had  lived  together  for  many  years  in  a  village 
near  Soletta.  One  day,  while  the  male  was  absent  pro- 
viding for  his  family,  a  younger  suitor  appeared,  and 
began  to  pay  court  to  the  wife.  She  received  his  ad- 
dresses at  first  with  indifference;  but  as  the  woman 
who  hesitates  is  lost,  so  she  finally  fell  into  the  snares 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  233 

of  her  passionate  and  persistent  adorer.  His  visits 
became  more  frequent,  and  at  last  he  succeeded  in  so 
completely  fascinating  the  matron  that  she  was  per- 
suaded to  accompany  him  to  a  marshy  meadow,  where 
her  unsuspecting  husband  was  engaged  in  catching 
frogs,  and  to  join  her  gay  paramour  in  putting  the  old 
stork  to  death. 

A  similar  case  occurred  recently  in  north  Germany. 
A  pair  of  storks  had  had  their  nest  on  the  roof  of  a 
barn  for  several  seasons,  without  any  apparent  discord 
in  their  domestic  relations.  Suddenly,  early  in  the 
spring,  a  powerful  male  stork  made  his  appearance, 
and  violently  attacked  the  husband,  who  bravely  de- 
fended himself;  his  spouse,  strangely  enough,  taking 
no  part  in  the  fray.  The  assailant  withdrew  toward 
evening,  his  feathers  dappled  with  blood,  but  renewed 
the  attack  on  the  following  morning.  The  proprietor 
of  the  estate  on  which  the  scene  took  place  resolved 
to  interfere  and  shoot  the  intruder,  but  unfortunately 
aimed  at  the  wrong  bird  and  killed  the  husband.  After 
this  mishap,  the  female  remained  quietly  perched  on 
the  roof  by  the  side  of  the  stranger,  with  whom  she 
soon  began  to  chatter  in  a  very  lively  manner.  The 
talk  continued  for  about  an  hour,  when  both  storks, 
as  with  one  accord,  fell  upon  the  nest,  threw  out  the 
eggs,  tore  it  in  pieces,  and,  after  gazing  for  a  moment 
on  the  ruins,  rose  together  into  the  air,  and,  mount- 
ing in  ever  higher  circles,  vanished  from  view.  Here 
the  wife  was  at  least  accessory  to  the  crime  after  its 
commission,  and  her  conduct  during  the  combat  would 
seem  to  indicate  that  the  strange  stork  was  her  accepted 
lover,  and  his  coming  preconcerted.  Such  occurrences, 
however,  are  exceptional.    As  a  rule,  storks  are  distin- 


234  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

guished  for  conjugal  fidelity  no  less  than  for  their 
superior  intelligence  and  the  strong  ties  of  affection 
which  they  form  for  human  beings. 

Eavens  also  have  been  known  to  destroy  a  nest  in 
which  a  young  owl  had  been  discovered,  and  to  kill 
both  the  birds  whose  home  had  thus  suffered  contamina- 
tion, being  evidently  determined  that  the  ancient  and 
honourable  race  of  Corvus  corax  should  not  be  cor- 
rupted; and  cocks,  in  several  cases,  are  said  to  have 
killed  hens  which  had  hatched  the  eggs  of  ducks  or  par- 
tridges. One  would  hardly  suspect  such  susceptibili- 
ties in  a  polygamous  fowl,  and  least  of  all  in  our  sultan 
of  the  barnyard,  who  guards  his  harem  with  the  fierce 
jealousy  of  a  Turk,  but  bears  his  paternal  responsibili- 
ties very  lightly,  leaving  the  brooding  mothers  and 
their  young  for  the  most  part  to  shift  for  themselves. 

An  unusally  large  number  of  ravens  was  recently 
observed  on  the  trees  in  the  Treptow  Park  of  Berlin. 
They  began  to  assemble  about  noon  and  continued  to 
arrive  from  all  points  of  the  compass  until  three  o'clock. 
After  croaking  together  in  loud  tones  for  some  time, 
they  all  pounced  upon  one  bird  sitting  apart  on  a  lower 
limb  and  belaboured  it  with  their  strong  beaks  until 
it  was  covered  with  blood  and  fell  dead  to  the  ground. 
Thereupon  they  all  flew  away  in  different  directions. 
It  is  evident  that  this  corvine  convention  was  precon- 
certed, and  that  the  purpose  of  it  was  to  punish  a  guilty 
member  of  the  community;  but  it  was  only  after  a 
thorough  discussion  of  the  matter  that  the  sentence  of 
death  was  passed  upon  the  culprit  and  immediately 
executed. 

0.  Flugel,  in  his  volume  Das  Seelenleben  der  Thiere 
(page  52),  admits  the  truth  of  the  stories  about  storks. 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  235 

but  doubts  whether  their  conduct  under  the  circum- 
stances has  been  correctly  interpreted.  "  How  do  we 
know,"  he  asks,  "  that  the  female  stork  is  put  to  death 
as  a  punishment  for  adultery?  .  .  .  Perhaps  she  was 
sick  and  therefore  unable  to  resist  the  suit  of  the  male 
stork,  and  was  killed  because  she  was  sick,  as  often 
happens  in  such  cases.  Perhaps,  too,  she  was  suffering, 
not  exactly  from  a  disease,  but  from  a  bodily  ab- 
normity." It  is  quite  as  difficult  to  imagine  storks 
congregating  for  diagnostic  as  for  judicial  purposes. 
A  ciconian  medical  consultation  is  not  less  marvellous 
and  incredible  than  a  ciconian  court  of  justice.  The 
assumption  that  she  was  physically  infirm,  instead  of 
being  a  frail  creature  from  a  moral  point  of  view,  does 
not  simplify  the  matter  or  render  the  proceedings  of 
the  storks  more  intelligible.  If  we  begin  to  indulge 
in  hypotheses  of  this  sort,  we  may  as  well  suppose  that 
she  was  acting  under  the  influence  of  hypnotic  sug- 
gestion or  some  other  irresistible  form  of  fascination. 

Indeed,  in  another  passage  (page  59),  Fliigel  intro- 
duces hypnotism  as  a  means  of  explaining  actions  on 
the  part  of  animals,  which  might  be  far  more  satis- 
factorily explained  by  simply  assuming  that  they  are 
capable  of  practising  deceit.  Thus  the  opossum  seeks 
to  escape  danger  by  feigning  death,  and  the  partridge 
pretends  to  be  lame  and  limps  off  in  an  opposite  direc- 
tion in  order  to  attract  the  attention  of  the  pursuer 
to  herself,  and  thus  divert  it  from  her  young.  "  Per- 
haps," says  Fliigel,  "fear  makes  the  fowl  really  lame 
and  throws  the  quadruped  into  an  actual  spasm  or 
kind  of  hypnotic  state."  It  is  very  queer  that  no 
amount  of  peril  and  terror  should  make  the  par- 
tridge go  lame  except  when  her  young  are  with  her; 
16 


236  ANIMAL   PSYCHOLOGY. 

and  any  one  who  has  hunted  opossums  knows  that  in 
feigning  death  they  show  no  symptoms  of  paralysis, 
but  remain  perfectly  warm  and  limp,  breathing  natu- 
rally, though  scarcely  perceptibly.  Herr  Fliigel  is 
determined  not  to  concede  to  the  lower  animals  the 
exercise  of  rational  faculties,  and  in  order  to  avoid  this 
necessity  does  not  hesitate  to  give  rein  to  the  wildest 
conjectures. 

As  we  have  already  seen,  the  impulses  and  motives 
which  lead  to  the  commission  of  crime  are  essentially 
the  same  in  beasts  and  in  man,  and  students  of 
penal  jurisprudence  are  just  beginning  to  learn  that  the 
psychology  of  criminality  in  civilized  society  can  never 
be  fully  understood  except  by  a  careful  scientific  study 
of  it  not  only  in  savages,  but  also  in  the  lower  animals. 
The  incentives  to  deeds  of  violence  are  pretty  much 
the  same  in  both.  Many  actions,  such  as  the  killing  of 
deformed  or  sickly  infants  and  of  old  and  infirm  in- 
dividuals, are  common  to  barbarians  and  to  beasts,  and 
are  regarded  as  right  because  they  contribute  to  the 
collective  strength  and  consequent  safety  of  the  tribe 
or  herd;  but  with  the  civilization  of  man  and  the  do- 
mestication of  the  brute  this  precaution  is  no  longer 
needed,  and  the  primitive  practice  is  abandoned.  Mice 
take  excellent  care  of  their  aged,  blind,  or  otherwise 
helpless  kin,  concealing  them  in  safe  places  and  pro- 
viding them  with  food.  It  must  be  remembered,  how- 
ever, that  the  mouse  has  lived  in  a  semidomestic  state 
as  the  companion  of  man  from  time  immemorial. 

In  the  development  and  organization  of  social  and 
civic  life  the  bee  and  the  ant  hold  the  foremost  place 
among  articulates,  corresponding  to  that  of  man  among 
vertebrates.     They  stand  respectively  at  the  head  of 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  237 

their  class,  and  represent  the  highest  point  attained 
by  insect  and  mammal  in  the  process  of  evolution.  As 
regards  form  of  government,  it  is  a  mistake  to  speak 
of  the  bee  state  as  a  monarchy;  it  is,  on  the  contrary, 
the  most  radical  of  republics,  or  rather  a  democracy 
of  the  most  rigorous  kind,  with  absolute  power  vested 
in  the  working  class.  The  claims  of  "  labour  "  to  the 
exercise  of  supreme  control  in  political  affairs  are  here 
fully  recognised  and  practically  realized.  The  so-called 
queen  is  really  the  mother  of  the  hive;  her  functions 
are  maternal  rather  than  regal.  If  she  may  be  said 
to  reign  in  a  certain  sense,  the  workers  rule,  deciding 
all  questions  and  performing  all  acts  affecting  the  com- 
mon weal.  The  existence  of  but  a  single  queen  leaves 
no  room  for  those  dynastic  enmities  and  rivalries  which 
have  so  often  disturbed  the  peace  of  human  empires, 
and  inflicted  such  untold  misery  upon  iiankind.  If 
perchance  two  queens  are  produced  at  the  same  time, 
instead  of  forming  factions  in  the  state  and  exciting 
civil  war,  they  contend  personally  for  sovereignty,  until 
one  of  them  is  killed.  Sometimes  the  workers  inter- 
vene, and  put  the  less  desirable  of  the  claimants  to 
death;  or  if  the  hive  is  populous  and  circumstances  are 
favourable,  a  portion  of  the  inmates  swarm  and  carry 
off  one  of  the  contestants  to  found  a  new  colony.  In 
all  these  operations  the  queen  initiates  nothing;  she 
is  a  passive  instrument  in  the  hands  of  the  workers, 
whose  decisions  she  accepts,  but  does  not  influence  in 
the  slightest  degree.  There  is  no  "blue  blood"  in 
her  veins  except  such  as  may  be  produced  by  a  process 
of  pampering;  she  is  simply  a  worker,  taken  in  a  larval 
state  and  fattened  into  regal  favour  and  function  by 
what  Huber  calls  "  royal  treatment; ''  that  is,  by  reliev- 


238  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

ing  her  from  all  toil  and  supplying  her  with  richer 
nutriment.  If,  on  account  of  bad  weather  or  for  any 
other  reason,  the  bees  do  not  wish  to  swarm,  they  do  not 
hesitate  to  throw  all  superfluous  members  of  the  royal 
family  out  of  the  hive.  The  institution  of  appanage 
is  unknown  to  apian  communities.  But,  in  order  to 
provide  for  emergencies,  several  larvae  are  reared  each 
in  a  single  cell,  which  the  old  queen  is  never  permitted 
to  approach,  since  she  is  as  jealous  of  these  royal  scions 
as  was  ever  Persian  padishah  of  his  next  of  kin.  For 
this  reason  they  are  kept  in  close  confinement  until 
they  are  needed. 

The  conjugal  relation  of  the  queen  to  the  drones 
is  polyandrous.  "  Her  male  harem,"  says  Biichner,  "  is 
larger  than  the  female  harem  of  any  Oriental  despot, 
and  consists  often  of  six  to  eight  hundred  drones,  who 
are  for  the  most  part  utterly  useless  members  of  the 
community,  since  a  single  drone  suffices  to  impregnate 
the  queen,  and  the  drones  neither  work  nor  are  they 
armed  with  stings  with  which  to  defend  the  hive.  They 
constitute  a  sort  of  hereditary  peerage,  letting  them- 
selves be  served  by  the  industrious  workers  and  con- 
tributing nothing  directly  to  the  promotion  of  the 
common  weal,  but  leading  a  lazy  and  comfortable  life 
of  leisure  and  pleasure  from  May  to  August,  free  from 
care  and  from  toil,  and  doubtless  with  no  presentiment 
of  the  fearful  fate  awaiting  them  in  the  autumn  of 
their  existence."  This  superfluity  of  drones,  so  opposed 
to  the  wise  economy  of  Nature,  is  regarded  by  Biichner 
as  the  survival  of  a  period  when  the  bees  lived  in  small, 
independent  colonies  and  the  drones,  as  they  flew 
abroad  a-wooing,  were  exposed  to  greater  dangers  than 
at  present.     The  gathering  of  bees  into  hives  under 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  239 

the  care  of  man  has  entirely  changed  this  condition 
of  things,  and  thus  left  an  excess  of  drones  far  above 
the  number  necessary  to  the  propagation  of  the  race. 

Doubtless  the  queen  has  certain  constitutional 
rights,  but  they  are  very  limited.  She  is  in  the  condition 
of  Queen  Victoria  with  Mr.  Gladstone  as  prime  minis- 
ter: she  is  not  asked  what  ought  to  be  done,  but  is 
simply  told  what  the  cabinet  intends  to  do,  and  is  ex- 
pected to  indorse  it,  whether  agreeable  to  her  feelings 
or  not.  But  this  relation  does  not  prevent  a  strong 
sentiment  of  loyalty  toward  her  on  the  part  of  the 
workers,  who  are  ready  to  defend  her  at  the  risk  of 
their  own  lives. 

On  the  other  hand,  they  do  not  show  the  slightest 
affection  for  the  males,  or  drones,  who  are  in  the  un- 
enviable position  of  prince  consorts,  or  mere  propaga- 
tors of  the  race.  Ko  provision  is  made  for  them  when 
the  winter  supplies  of  food  are  laid  in;  they  fulfil  their 
mission  in  summer,  flying  abroad  on  wedding  tours  with 
the  queens  of  various  hives  and  enjoying  their  honey- 
moon; but  with  the  early  frosts  they  are  thrust  out 
of  the  hives,  and  perish  of  hunger  and  cold.  Mean- 
while the  queens  preserve  the  sperm  in  a  sac,  and  use 
it  at  pleasure  for  fecundating  the  eggs;  as  the  fecun- 
dated eggs  produce  females  and  the  unfecundated  males, 
the  numerical  relation  of  the  sexes  can  be  easily  regu- 
lated. The  workers,  or  neuters,  are  really  females, 
whose  sexual  organs  remain  rudimentary  because  all 
their  energies  are  absorbed  in  labour.  The  ovary  is 
only  partially  formed,  and  they  are  incapable  of  laying 
eggs;  but  it  needs  only  a  course  of  "  royal  treatment," 
consisting  of  luxury  and  idleness,  to  develop  any  of  the 
larvae  into  queens.    It  is  asserted  that  workers  do  some- 


240  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

times,  though  rarely,  lay  eggs;  but  this  capability  im- 
plies some  degree  of  development  beyond  the  condition 
of  a  "  neuter  "  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term,  a  change 
which  might  easily  escape  the  eye  of  the  "  practical 
apiarist,^'  who  is  usually  less  interested  in  the  habits 
of  bees  than  in  the  market  price  of  honey.  The  queen 
has  no  heirs,  either  apparent  or  presumptive,  and  no 
right  of  succession  is  recognised.  Any  larviform  worker 
can  be  metamorphosed  into  a  queen,  as  every  Ameri- 
can schoolboy  is  a  possible  President  of  the  United 
States. 

That  this  perfect  social  and  industrial  organization, 
in  which  the  principle  of  the  division  of  labour  is  so  ad- 
mirably applied  and  a  career  opened  to  every  talent,  is 
the  result  of  gradual  growth  and  evolution  is  evident 
from  the  more  primitive  habits  of  other  hymenoptera, 
such  as  wasps,  hornets,  and  bumblebees.  Tame  honey- 
bees also  dilfer  greatly  in  this  respect  from  wild  ones, 
and  are  known  to  have  changed  their  manner  of  life 
and  to  have  improved  their  methods  of  work  to  a  con- 
siderable extent  within  the  memory  of  man.  A  Ger- 
man writer  states  that  when  the  European  bee  was  im- 
ported to  Australia,  after  a  few  years'  experience  of 
perpetual  summer,  it  ceased  to  lay  up  winter  stores  of 
honey,  making  only  what  it  wanted  to  eat  from  day 
to  day.  This  fact,  less  edifying  to  the  practical  apiarist 
than  instructive  to  the  zoopsychologist,  furnishes  the 
basis  of  Eosegger's  charming  tale  and  socialistic  satire 
of  anarchism  in  the  hives.  Here  we  have  an  example 
of  radical  changes  in  the  habits  of  bees  within  the 
memory  of  the  present  generation  as  the  result  of  new 
climatic  conditions  and  the  modifying  influence  of  en- 
vironment.    This  phenomenon  is  wholly  inconsistent 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  241 

with  the  assumption  of  an  innate  and  irresistible  labour 
instinct. 

Populous  and  powerful  bee  communities  sometimes 
relapse  into  barbarism,  renounce  the  life  of  peaceful  in- 
dustry for  which  they  have  become  proverbial,  acquire 
predatory  habits,  and  roam  about  the  country  as  free- 
booters, plundering  the  smaller  and  weaker  hives,  and 
subsisting  on  the  spoils.  These  brigand  bees  seldom 
reform:  if  they  busily  "improve  each  shining  hour," 
it  is  not  to  "  gather  honey  all  the  day  from  every  open- 
ing flower,"  but  to  range  the  fields  in  looting  parties, 
and  ransack  the  homes  of  honest  honey-makers.  Wey- 
gandt  (in  the  periodical  Die  Biene,  1877,  No.  1,  cited 
by  Biichner:  Aus  dem  Geistesleben  der  Thiere,  p. 
322)  describes  the  evolution  and  exploits  of  these 
"milking  bees,"  as  he  calls  them,  and  shows  how  the 
successful  raid  of  a  few  individual  filibusters  soon  con- 
verts the  whole  hive  into  a  lawless  band  of  depredators, 
who  live  by  plunder.  Against  these  anarchists  of  apian 
society  and  other  foes  the  honeybees  often  fortify  their 
hives,  barricading  the  entrance  by  a  thick  wall,  with 
bastions,  casemates,  and  deep,  narrow  gateways.  When 
there  seems  to  be  no  immediate  danger  of  hostile  at- 
tack, these  defensive  works,  which  seriously  interfere 
with  the  ordinary  industrial  life  of  the  hive,  are  re- 
moved, and  not  rebuilt  until  there  is  fresh  occasion  for 
alarm.  Jesse  (Gleanings  in  Natural  History,  i.,  21) 
states  that  the  bees  of  one  of  his  hives  built  a  regular- 
ly constructed  fortress  wall  before  the  entrance,  in 
order  to  defend  themselves  more  effectually  against 
the  raids  of  wasps,  and  adds  that  a  small  number  of  bees 
were  thereby  enabled  to  ward  off  these  foes.  The  Swiss 
naturalist  Huber,  who  began  to  publish  his  observa- 


242  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

tions  on  the  habits  of  bees  more  than  a  century  ago 
and  is  generally  recognised  as  a  high  authority,  noticed 
that  his  bees  erected  a  wall  against  the  inroads  of  the 
death's-head  moth  in  the  spring  of  1804,  but  removed 
it  in  the  spring  of  1805,  in  which  year  no  moths  of  this 
kind  were  seen.  In  1807,  when  the  moths  reappeared 
in  considerable  numbers,  the  bees  again  fortified  the 
entrance  and  kept  it  in  a  state  of  defence  till  1808. 
These  barricades  were  made  of  propolis.  Biichner 
(page  308)  records  other  cases  of  a  similar  character  in 
Hungary,  where  the  death's-head  moth  (Sphinx  atropos) 
frequently  molests  the  hives.  The  common  bee  (Apis 
mellifica)  not  only  rifles  the  nest  of  the  bumblebee 
(Bonibus),  but  numbers  of  them  often  surround  one  of 
the  latter  and  force  him  to  give  up  the  sacs  of  honey 
he  has  gathered.  The  clumsy  and  not  very  courageous 
bumblebee  submits  to  the  demands  of  these  highway- 
men, surrenders  his  treasure  without  much  ado,  and 
then  flies  afield  in  search  of  more. 

Biichner  states  that  honest  and  industrious  bees 
degenerate  into  vagabonds  and  robbers  through  the  use 
of  alcohol.  If  they  are  fed  with  a  mixture  of  honey 
and  brandy,  they  become  passionately  fond  of  it,  get 
habitually  drunk  and  disorderly,  and  gradually  cease 
to  work.  The  pangs  of  hunger,  the  penalty  of  one  vice, 
drive  them  into  another,  and  they  take  to  theft  and  free- 
bootery,  as  men  do  under  similar  circumstances.  In- 
stinct is  not  strong  enough  to  resist  the  depraving  in- 
fluence of  intoxicating  liquors  and  save  them  from  a 
downward  career  of  demoralization  and  criminality. 

According  to  recent  observations  made  by  Mr.  Law- 
8on  Tait,  wasps  get  drunk  on  the  juice  of  plums,  grapes, 
and  other  fruits,  which  is  converted  into  alcohol  by  the 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  243 

process  of  decay.  While  in  a  state  of  intoxication,  their 
sting  is  uncommonly  venomous  and  produces  the  symp- 
toms of  nerve  poisoning.  The  wasps  hecome  so  ad- 
dicted to  this  fermented  juice  that  they  take  to  it  again 
as  soon  as  they  have  slept  off  their  drunkenness,  and 
thus  pass  in  rapid  succession  from  one  paroxysm  of  in- 
ehriety  to  another.  Hens,  too,  which  have  access  to 
the  refuse  of  distilleries,  soon  become  habitual  drunk- 
ards, stop  laying  eggs,  and  show  no  desire  to  rear  broods 
of  chickens.  In  December,  1896,  an  owner  of  poultry 
in  England  brought  a  suit  for  damages  against  the 
proprietor  of  a  distillery,  because  owing  to  the  corrup- 
tion of  a  neighbouring  stream  his  fowls  had  become 
hopeless  inebriates  and  thereby  wholly  worthless. 

It  is  undeniable  that,  in  the  life  of  the  honeybee, 
a  sort  of  historical  connection  exists  between  the 
mother-hive  and  her  colonies.  This  sense  of  kinship 
extends  to  the  colonies  of  colonies,  and  tims  gives  rise 
to  something  like  international  relations  between  a 
large  number  of  apian  communities,  which  share  the 
friendships  and  the  hatreds  of  the  original  stock  and 
transmit  them  to  their  posterity.  Lenz  relates  his  own 
experience  on  this  point.  Six  of  his  hives  were  blown 
down  by  the  wind;  he  hastened  to  set  them  up  again, 
but  the  bees,  rushing  out  and  seeing  him  thus  engaged, 
regarded  him  as  the  cause  of  the  disaster,  and  stung 
him.  For  years  afterward  they  pursued  him  whenever 
he  approached  their  hives,  and  this  unjust  antipathy 
was  inherited  by  all  the  swarms  which  issued  from  these 
hives  and  founded  colonies  elsewhere. 

Here  we  have  a  striking  instance  of  hereditary 
enmity,  such  as  often  characterizes  families,  tribes,  and 
clans,  and  takes  the  form  of  the  vendetta.     The  bees 


244  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

that  had  suffered  the  supposed  wrong  never  forget  it, 
and  communicated  their  feelings  to  their  descendants 
by  way  of  tradition.* 

In  order  to  test  the  intelHgence  and  foresight  of 
bees  Huber  put  them  into  a  hive  with  a  glass  floor  and  a 
glass  ceiling.  It  is  well  known  that  bees  have  great 
difficulty  in  building  their  cells  on  glass  on  account 
of  its  smooth  surface,  and  avoid  doing  so  if  possible. 
In  the  present  case  they  began  to  build  their  comb, 
not  from  the  top  or  the  bottom,  as  usual,  but  on  one  of 
the  perpendicular  sides  over  toward  the  opposite  wall, 
but  before  they  had  reached  it  Huber  substituted  for 
it  a  glass  plate.  The  result  was  that  they  ceased  build- 
ing in  that  direction,  and,  turning  at  a  right  angle, 
extended  their  comb  to  the  other  wooden  side  and 
fastened  it  there.  They  did  not  wait  until  they  had 
come  in  contact  with  the  glass  before  changing  their 
plan,  but  foresaw  and  avoided  the  difficulty  in  the  man- 
ner described. 

Prantl's  assertion  that  animals  do  not  plant  seeds 
in  the  earth  and  raise  crops  is  merely  one  of  many 
a  priori  deductions  from  his  assumption  that  they  lack 
time-sense,  and  therefore  can  have  no  appreciation  of 
the  succession  of  seasons.  All  facts  opposed  to  this 
inference  he  would  treat  with  a  sceptical  shrug  of  the 
shoulders,  or  relegate  with  an  incredulous  smile  to  the 
realm  of  fable.  Nevertheless  it  is  only  by  the  care- 
ful observation  and  critical  sifting  of  facts  that  such 
questions  can  be  decided. 

It  has  now  been  ascertained  beyond  a  doubt  that  in 


*  Cf.  Wundt,  Vorlesiingen  iiber  dieMeuschen- und  Thierscele, 
ii,  19C-200.    Also  article  Bees  in  Encyclopaedia  i3iitaimica. 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  245 

Texas  and  South  America,  as  well  as  in  southern 
Europe,  India,  and  Africa,  there  are  ants  which  not 
only  have  a  military  organization  and  wage  systematic 
warfare,  but  also  keep  slaves  and  carry  on  agricultural 
pursuits.  Nineteen  species  of  ants  with  these  habits 
have  been  already  discovered,  and  their  modes  of  life 
more  or  less  fully  described. 

Nearly  half  a  century  ago  Dr.  Linsecom  began  his 
studies  of  the  Texan  agricultural  ant  {Atta  malefaciens), 
and  after  devoting  some  fourteen  years  to  this  subject 
communicated  the  results  of  his  researches  to  Mr.  Dar- 
win, who  embodied  them  in  a  paper  read  before  the 
Linnean  Society  of  London,  April  18,  1861.  This  ant, 
he  informs  us,  "  dwells  in  what  may  be  termed  paved 
cities,  and,  like  a  thrifty,  diligent,  provident  farmer, 
makes  suitable  and  timely  arrangements  for  the  chang- 
ing seasons.  ...  It  bores  a  hole,  around  which  it 
raises  the  surface  three  and  sometimes  six  inches,  form- 
ing a  low  circular  mound  having  a  very  gentle  inclina- 
tion from  the  centre  to  the  outer  border,  which,  on  an 
average,  is  three  or  four  feet  from  the  entrance.  On  low, 
flat,  wet  land,  liable  to  inundation,  though  the  ground 
may  be  perfectly  dry  at  the  time  when  the  ant  sets  to 
work,  it  nevertheless  elevates  the  mound  in  the  form 
of  a  pretty  sharp  cone  to  the  height  of  fifteen  to  twenty 
inches  or  more,  and  makes  the  entrance  near  the  sum- 
mit. Around  this  mound,  in  either  case,  the  ant  clears 
the  ground  of  all  obstructions,  and  levels  and  smooths 
the  surface  to  the  distance  of  three  or  four  feet  from 
the  gate  of  the  city,  giving  it  the  appearance  of  a  hand- 
some pavement,  as  it  really  is.  Within  this  paved  area 
not  a  blade  of  anything  is  allowed  to  grow,  except  a 
single  species  of  grain-bearing  grass.    Having  planted 


246  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

this  crop  in  a  circle  around,  and  two  or  three  feet  from 
the  centre  of  the  mound,  the  insect  tends  and  cultivates 
it  with  constant  care;  cutting  away  all  other  grasses 
and  weeds  that  may  spring  up  among  it,  and  all  around 
outside  the  farm  circle  to  the  extent  of  one  or  two  feet 
or  more.  The  cultivated  grass  grows  luxuriantly,  and 
produces  a  heavy  crop  of  small,  white,  flinty  seeds, 
which  under  the  microscope  very  closely  resemble  ordi- 
nary rice.  When  ripe,  it  is  carefully  harvested,  and  car- 
ried by  the  workers,  chaff  and  all,  into  the  granary 
cells,  where  it  is  divested  of  the  chaff  and  packed 
away.  The  chaff  is  taken  out  and  thrown  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  paved  area.  During  protracted  wet 
weather,  it  sometimes  happens  that  the  provision  stores 
become  damp,  and  are  liable  to  sprout  and  spoil.  In 
this  case,  on  the  first  fine  day,  the  ants  bring  out  the 
damp  and  damaged  grain,  and  expose  it  to  the  sun 
till  it  is  dry,  when  they  carry  back  and  pack  away  all 
the  sound  seeds,  leaving  those  that  had  sprouted  to 
waste."  They  also  check  the  tendency  of  the  seeds  to 
germinate  by  biting  off  the  incipient  sprouts,  treat- 
ing them  as  a  farmer  does  his  potatoes  or  onions  under 
similar  circumstances. 

In  pasture  lands,  the  grass  cultivated  by  the  ants  is 
liable  to  be  cropped  by  cattle,  and  thus  prevented  from 
bearing  seeds  and  producing  a  harvest.  In  order  to 
avert  such  a  disaster,  the  ants  avoid  the  meadows,  which 
are  given  up  to  grazing,  and  establish  themselves  in  the 
fence  corners  of  cultivated  fields,  along  garden  walks 
or  near  gateways,  or  in  other  protected  places,  where 
their  crops  run  the  least  risk  of  being  destroyed. 

These  observations,  the  truth  of  which  is  amply 
confirmed  by  other  writers,  as,  for  example,  by  Dr. 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  24:7 

Henry  C.  McCook  in  The  Agricultural  Ants  of  Texas, 
are  a  complete  refutation  of  PrantFs  zoopsychology; 
for  no  husbandman  ever  showed  greater  sldll  in  adapt- 
ing himself  to  circumstances,  or  manifested  a  higher 
degree  of  intelligence  and  foresight  in  conducting  his 
agricultural  operations,  and  in  consulting  for  this  pur- 
pose the  nature  of  the  soil  and  the  variety  of  the  sea- 
sons, than  are  exhibited  by  these  marvellous  insects. 

Indeed,  nearly  all  the  institutions  and  gradations 
of  culture  and  civilization  which  the  human  race  has 
passed  through,  and  of  which  we  find  survivals  among 
the  different  tribes  of  men,  exist  also  among  ants.  Be- 
sides the  tillers  of  the  soil  just  mentioned,  there  are 
other  species,  like  the  Peruvian  cazadores,  which  still 
lead  a  nomadic  life,  having  no  permanent  homes,  but 
wandering  from  place  to  place;  entering  the  houses 
of  the  natives  by  millions;  killing  rats  mice,  snakes, 
and  all  sorts  of  vermin;  devouring  offal;  and  perform- 
ing in  general  the  useful  functions  of  itinerant  scaven- 
gers. On  the  approach  of  these  hordes  the  inhabitants 
quit  their  dwellings,  and  do  not  return  until  the  in- 
vading host  has  passed  on.  Dr.  Hans  Meyer,  in  an 
account  of  his  ascent  of  the  Kilima-Njaro,  in  equatorial 
Africa,  states  that  his  camp  was  one  night  attacked 
by  an  army  of  driver  ants,  and  had  to  be  abandoned. 
He  describes  the  army  as  divided  into  three  distinct 
classes,  or  castes,  superior  officers,  underofficers,  and 
the  rank  and  file,  each  of  which  is  provided  with 
mandibles  of  different  size  and  efficiency  as  weapons, 
and  corresponding  with  the  duties  they  have  to  per- 
form. Other  ants  have  advanced  beyond  this  nomadic 
life  of  pillage,  and  have  acquired  fixed  habitations; 
they  do  not  cultivate  the  soil,  but  keep  herds  of  aphides, 


248  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

or  plant  lice,  which  yield  them  a  milky  substance,  and 
are  also  slaughtered  for  food. 

The  desire  to  get  possession  of  these  aphides  is  often 
the  occasion  of  fierce  raids  of  one  community  of  ants 
upon  another,  forcibly  recalling  the  cattle-lifting  forays 
of  Scotch  clans,  once  so  common  on  the  northern  border 
of  England.  A  recent  observer,  Mr.  James  Weir,  Jr., 
gives  a  graphic  description  of  a  predatory  incursion  of 
this  kind  made  by  an  army  of  black  ants  (Lasius  niger) 
into  the  domain  of  some  yellow  ants  {Lasius  flavus), 
whose  herd  of  aphides  was  feeding  under  guard.  The 
invading  myrmidons  "were  marching  in  full  battle 
array,  with  a  skirmish  line  in  advance.  They  came 
on  with  a  rush,  as  if  they  intended  a  surprise.  Some 
outposts,  or  pickets,  of  Lasius  flavus  discovered  them 
when  ten  or  twelve  feet  away  from  the  town  of  Lasius 
flavus.  These  pickets  raced  home  and  gave  the  alarm. 
Immediately  the  inhabitants  poured  out  and  arranged 
themselves  in  front  of  their  beloved  herd.  Skirmishers 
were  thrown  out  and  soon  met  the  advancing  Lasius 
niger.  In  a  few  moments  the  battle  was  on,  and  it  was 
a  battle  to  the  death.  The  Lasius  niger  outnumbered 
the  Lasius  flavus  three  to  one.  As  near  as  I  could 
reckon  there  were  about  fifteen  hundred  of  the  blacks 
and  about  five  hundred  of  the  yellow  ants.  The 
yellow  ants  were  larger  and  stronger,  but  the  blacks 
were  more  agile.  The  yellow  Lasius  rushed  at  her 
enemy  with  open  mandibles,  and  seizing  her  by  the 
middle,  crushed  her  through  and  through.  The  black 
Lasius  endeavoured  to  get  behind  her  enemy  and  then 
seize  her  by  one  of  her  legs.  If  she  succeeded  in  her 
attempt,  no  bulldog  ever  held  on  with  greater  tenacity. 
As  soon  as  possible  another  black  ant  would  come  to 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  249 

her  assistance,  and  mounting  on  the  back  of  the  yellow- 
ant  would  begin  at  once  to  gnaw  through  the  thoracic 
wall.  In  a  few  seconds  the  shell  would  be  eaten 
through,  the  vitals  would  be  reached,  and  the  yellow 
ant  would  sink  down  in  the  struggle  of  death.  Not 
until  certain  that  she  was  dead  would  Lasius  niger, 
who  had  her  by  the  leg,  loosen  her  hold.  Lasius  niger, 
in  this  foray,  came  in  light  marching  order.  They 
carried  no  commissariat  department,  no  ambulance 
corps.  Lasius  fiavus,  on  the  contrary,  had  both.  When 
wearied  or  wounded  the  yellow  ants  would  drop  to  the 
rear  and  communicate  their  wants.  The  ambulance 
corps  dressed  their  wounds  with  their  tongues;  the 
commissariat  refreshed  them 'by  regurgitating  food  into 
their  open  jaws.  All  through  the  battle  I  noticed  this 
wonderful  power  of  intelligent  communication.  Lasius 
fiavus  sent  repeatedly  back  to  the  town  to  bring  out  the 
stragglers.  It  was  like  a  well-ordered  biittle  between 
human  beings.  These  ants  acted  as  though  governed 
by  an  intelligence  analogous  to  that  which  directs  the 
actions  of  men.  In  the  end,  Lasius  niger  won  the  vic- 
tory, but  not  until  they  had  killed  every  Lasius  fiavus^ 
and  lost  two  thirds  of  their  own  number.  The  sur- 
vivors carried  off  the  bone  of  contention,  the  herd  of 
aphides,  to  their  own  nest,  some  fifty  feet  away." 

The  slaveholding  ants  are  of  several  kinds,  and 
differ  greatly  in  the  manner  in  which  they  treat  their 
vassals.  Some  make  them  do  all  the  work  under  the 
direction  of  overseers;  others  share  their  labours;  while 
still  others  have  fallen  into  such  habits  of  luxury  as  to 
be  unable  or  unwilling  to  wait  upon  or  even  to  feed 
themselves,  and  are  carried  about  and  provided  with 
food   by   their   body   servants.     In   many   cases   this 


250  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

sybaritism  is  the  mere  ostentatious  love  of  being  served. 
The  incapacity  is  not  physical,  but  moral,  and  arises 
from  an  aristocratic  aversion  to  any  kind  of  menial 
labour,  from  the  pleasure  of  being  served  by  a  train 
of  obsequious  attendants,  and  the  notion  that  it  is  more 
dignified  and  distinguished  to  be  borne  along  and  to 
have  food  put  into  their  mouths  than  to  walk  on  their 
own  legs  and  to  help  themselves  to  victuals;  since 
these  apparently  so  helpless  ants  are  agile  and  ener- 
getic enough  as  warriors,  when  it  is  a  question  of  con- 
quering and  plundering  their  peaceful  neighbours.  It 
is  the  false  sense  of  honour,  fostered  by  the  military 
spirit,  which  takes  pride  in  brandishing  a  sword  and, 
on  the  slightest  provocation,  plunging  it  into  the  vitals 
of  a  fellow-man,  but  would  deem  it  a  deep  disgrace 
for  an  officer  to  brush  his  own  clothes  or  black  his 
own  boots. 

Sometimes,  in  consequence  of  severe  exactions,  the 
slaves  rise  in  revolt,  and  are  mercilessly  put  to  death; 
and  formican  like  old  Eoman  law  seems  to  recognise 
the  right  of  the  master  to  inflict  summary  capital  pun- 
ishment in  such  cases.  This  power  is  often  exercised 
by  the  red-bearded  ant  {Formica  ruUbarUs),  who  is  a 
fierce  slaveholder,  and  as  pitiless  in  suppressing  mutiny 
as  was  Barbarossa  after  the  siege  of  Milan. 

Ants  differ  in  quickness  of  apprehension  and  in 
ingenuity  quite  as  much  as  men  do.  Some  with  which 
Sir  John  Lubbock  experimented,  when  cut  off  from 
their  supply  of  food  by  the  removal  of  a  little  strip  of 
paper  which  had  served  as  a  bridge  over  a  chasm  a 
third  of  an  inch  in  breadth,  did  not  know  enough  to 
replace  it.  In  similar  cases,  ants  have  been  observed 
bringing  straws  from  a  distance  for  the  express  pur- 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  251 

pose  of  bridging  chasms  that  separated  them  from  a 
desirable  article  of  food.  Bridges  for  this  purpose  are 
often  an  inch  long,  and  made  of  mortar  or  cement  con- 
sisting of  a  mixture  of  fine  sand  with  a  salivary  secre- 
tion. 

In  a  monastery  near  Botzen,  in  the  Tyrol,  one  of 
the  monks  put  some  pounded  sugar,  together  with  a 
few  ants  taken  from  an  ant  hill  in  the  garden,  into  an 
old  inkstand,  which  he  suspended  by  a  string  from 
the  crosspiece  of  his  window.  Very  soon  the  ants 
began  to  carry  the  sugar  along  the  string  to  their  home 
in  the  garden,  and  returned  with  many  others  that 
went  to  work  in  the  same  way.  After  two  days,  al- 
though the  greater  part  of  the  sugar  was  still  in  the 
inkstand,  no  ants  were  seen  on  the  string;  and,  on 
closer  examination,  it  was  found  that  about  a  dozen  of 
them  were  in  the  inkstand,  busily  engaged  in  throwing 
the  sugar  down  upon  the  window  sill  oelow,  where 
others  were  carrying  it  off  to  the  hill.  They  thus  saved 
themselves  the  trouble  of  climbing  the  whole  length 
of  the  window  and  down  the  string  into  the  inkstand 
and  back  again  with  their  burdens,  and  avoided  by 
this  means  an  immense  expenditure  of  strength  and  loss 
of  time.  This  change  in  the  plan  of  operations  shows 
remarkable  powers  of  observation  and  reflection,  and 
was  doubtless  suggested  by  some  of  the  more  thought- 
ful and  practical  members  of  the  community,  and,  after 
being  communicated  to  the  others,  was  adopted  by 
them. 

The  intelligence  of  hymenoptera  (ants  and  bees), 
like  that  of  human  beings,  depends  upon  the  develop- 
ment of  the  nervous  system,  and  especially  upon  the 
size  and  structure  of  the  brain.  According  to  the  tables 
17 


252  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

published  by  Dr.  Vitus  Graber,  the  cerebrum  of  the 
bee's  brain  is  -^  and  the  cerebellum  yoVt)  P^^^  ^^  ^^^ 
body,  while  the  corresponding  portions  of  the  ant's 
brain  are  -2-iTr^^d-s"o-5-  ^^  ^^®  ^^^^  ^^  ^^^  whole  body.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  brain  of  the  May  bug  forms  -3-5*5-^ 
and  that  of  the  water  beetle  only  ^Vir  P^^  of  its  body. 
These  fractions  express  approximately  the  relative  men- 
tal capacity  of  each  of  the  aforesaid  insects,  and  the 
proportion  is  nearly  the  same  as  that  existing  between 
man  and  the  larger  mammals,  such  as  the  horse  and  the 
ox.  The  brain  of  the  ant  is,  on  an  average,  about  one 
quarter  the  size  of  an  ordinary  pin's  head,  although 
it  differs  with  different  species.  It  is,  doubtless,  as 
Darwin  has  observed,  the  most  marvellous  physical 
atom  in  any  living  organism,  not  even  excepting  the 
brain  of  man,  and  shows  what  an  amount  of  mental 
activity  and  energy  may  emanate  from  an  exceedingly 
minute  particle  of  nerve  substance  or  be  concentrated 
in  the  smallest  ganglion.  But  the  superior  intelligence 
of  ants,  bees,  and  other  hymenoptera  living  in  highly 
organized  communities,  is  due  not  only  to  the  greater 
relative  size,  but  still  more  to  the  complicated  forma- 
tion and  composition  of  the  brain,  which  is  divided 
into  two  hemispheres,  and  differs  from  that  of  all  other 
insects  in  its  pedunculate  character.  The  effects  of 
injuries  to  the  brain  of  an  ant  are  analogous  to  those 
caused  by  injuries  to  the  human  brain:  spasms,  stupe- 
faction, nervous  prostration,  the  substitution  of  in- 
definite reflex  action  for  voluntary  movements  of  the 
body,  raving  madness,  etc.,  according  to  the  parts  af- 
fected. Such  phenomena  have  been  often  observed  as 
the  results  of  wounds  received  in  battle,  or  in  defend- 
ing the  larvae  or  nymphs  against  the  attempts  of  preda- 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  253 

tory  Amazon  ants  to  capture  them.  It  is  a  curious  and 
significant  fact,  too,  that  the  babyhood  of  the  ant  is 
relatively  quite  as  long  as  that  of  man,  and  during  this 
plastic  period  of  infancy  the  young  of  the  genus 
Formica  are  quite  as  helpless  and  dependent  upon  the 
fostering  care  of  their  elders  as  are  the  young  of  the 
genus  Homo.  "  The  larvae,"  says  Biichner,  "  are  occa- 
sionally sorted  and  divided  into  different  groups,  ac- 
cording to  their  age  and  size,  so  that  one  is  involuntarily 
reminded  of  a  school  with  distribution  of  the  pupils 
into  classes."  "Nothing  is  more  attractive,"  observes 
Blanchard,  "than  the  incessant  care  of  the  ants  for 
their  larvae.  They  keep  them  perfectly  clean  by  rub- 
bing and  brushing  them  with  their  labial  feelers,  carry 
them  in  the  morning  to  the  upper  stories  of  the  nest, 
where  it  is  warmer,  and  take  them  below  again  later  in 
the  day  in  order  to  escape  the  scorching  ra}'s  of  the  mid- 
day sun.  This  transportation  occurs  as  of ;  en  as  atmos- 
pheric changes  and  variations  of  the  temperature  require 
it.  The  soft  bodies  of  the  larvae  are  borne  between  the 
firm  jaws  of  the  ants,  but  no  injury  or  accident  has  ever 
been  noticed;  they  are  never  bruised  or  wounded  or 
hit  against  the  hard  walls."  After  reaching  a  certain 
stage  of  growth,  during  the  course  of  the  summer  or 
sometimes  not  until  the  following  spring,  the  larvae  spin 
themselves  into  so-called  pupae  or  chrysalides,  popularly 
but  falsely  supposed  to  be  ant's  eggs  and  much  in  quest 
as  food  for  caged  birds.  These  pupae  or  nymphs  do  not 
require  feeding,  but  are  nevertheless  solicitously  looked 
after  by  the  working  ants,  licked,  cleaned,  carried  about, 
and  on  fine  days  exposed  to  the  air  and  light  in  front 
of  the  nest.  When  the  sun  gets  too  hot  the  attendants 
summon  the  workers,  who  carry  the  large,  white,  un- 


254  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

shapely  things  back  into  the  nest  just  as  a  cat  carries 
her  kittens.  As  soon  as  the  pupae  have  developed  into 
ants  they  try  to  free  themselves  from  their  fibrous  in- 
casement,  but  seldom  succeed  without  the  aid  of  the 
workers,  who  unloose  the  web  with  their  jaws  and  draw 
the  young  out  of  their  place  of  confinement.  After 
their  release  the  skin,  which  still  covers  them  like  a 
shirt,  is  removed  and  their  process  of  education  begins. 
They  are  conducted  through  the  nest  and  shown  how 
to  work.  At  first  light  tasks  are  assigned  to  them,  such 
as  taking  care  of  larvae,  just  as  in  human  families  older 
children  are  made  to  look  after  the  infants.  It  is  easy 
to  distinguish  the  young  ants  from  the  old  ones  by 
their  lighter  colour,  and  thus  to  observe  their  actions. 
In  a  short  time,  however,  generally  in  three  or  four 
days,  they  are  fitted  to  perform  the  duties  of  a  full- 
grown  ant. 

What  Solomon  says  of  the  ants,  that  they  have  "  no 
guide,  overseer,  or  ruler "  (Prov.  vi,  7),  is  confirmed 
by  modern  entomologists,  at  least  in  its  application  to 
the  ordinary  species,  ^o  one  ant  seems  to  command 
the  others,  and  Huber  affirms  that  even  the  slaves 
are  not  subject  to  the  slightest  compulsion.  "  It  is 
the  consciousness  of  duty  alone  that  preserves  order 
and  secures  diligence."  Forel  asserts  that  the  allusion 
to  chiefs  made  by  some  writers  (e.  g.,  Ebrard)  is  "  a 
mere  figment  of  the  imagination."  If  the  larger  and 
stronger  ants  take  the  lead  in  marching  against  foes, 
this  prominence  is  due  to  their  greater  energy  and  effi- 
ciency as  fighters  and  does  not  imply  any  other  supe- 
riority. Even  the  warriors,  who  in  some  European  and 
nearly  all  tropical  species  of  ants  appear  to  form  a  dis- 
tinct caste,  "never  play  an  imperious  part,  but  only 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  255 

serve  the  commonwealth."  Under  such  circumstances 
a  coup  d'etat  or  other  arrogation  of  sovereignty  by  a 
successful  soldier  would  be  impossible.* 

As  regards  moral  attributes,  says  Dr.  McCook  in 
his  work  on  the  honey  ants:  "  I  am  much  inclined  to 
the  view  that  anything  like  individual  benevolence,  as 
distinguished  from  tribal  or  communal  benevolence, 
does  not  exist.  The  apparent  special  cases  of  benefi- 
cence, outside  the  instinctive  actions  which  lie  within 
the  lines  of  formicary  routine,  are  so  rare  and  so 
doubtful  as  to  their  cause  that,  however  loath,  I  must 
decide  against  anything  like  a  personal  benevolent  char- 
acter on  the  part  of  my  honey  ants."  f 

It  is  often  quite  impossible  to  determine  whether 
human  actions  arise  from  public  spirit  or  private  feel- 
ing; and  an  attempt  to  fathom  the  motives  of  ants, 
and  to  decide  whether  they  are  animated  by  a  love  of 
their  kind  and  a  desire  to  promote  the  general  weal, 
or  by  a  special  good  will  toward  individuals  and  what 
we  call  personal  kindness,  is  attended  with  equal  dif- 
ficulty. But  what  the  author  affirms  of  honey  ants  is 
also  true  of  savages,  whose  benevolence  is  tribal  rather 
than  personal;  even  civilized  man,  with  rare  excep- 
tions, moves  in  the  same  narrow  traditional  rut,  and 
is  swayed  in  all  his  sentiments  by  national  prejudices 
and  prepossessions.  The  feeling  of  kinship  is  never- 
theless especially  strong  in  ants,  and  is  not  weakened 
by  long  absence.  Mr.  Darwin  shut  several  of  them 
in  a  bottle  with  asafoetida,  and  then  released  them 
and  brought  them  back  to  their  colony.     At  first  their 

*  Cf.  Biichner,  pp.  54-57,  75-81. 

t  The  Honey  Ants  of  the  Garden  of  the  Gods,  and  the  Occi- 
dent Ants  of  the  American  Plains,  page  45. 


256  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

fellow-ants  threatened  to  attack  them  and  thrust  them 
out,  but  soon  recognised  them  under  their  offensive 
disguise,  and  received  them  with  evident  marks  of  af- 
fection. Still,  no  one  would  be  justified  in  asserting 
that  the  elements  of  individual  love  and  personal 
preference  do  not  also  enter  into  these  relations.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  strong  attachments  are  formed  between 
animals,  and  that  they  are  capable  of  emotions  of  pity 
and  acts  of  generosity  not  only  toward  their  own  kind, 
but  even  toward  creatures  of  another  species.  A  gen- 
tleman who  had  a  great  number  of  doves  used  to  feed 
them  near  the  barn;  at  such  times  not  only  chickens 
and  sparrows,  but  also  rats,  were  accustomed  to  come 
and  share  the  meal.  One  day  he  saw  a  large  rat  fill 
its  cheeks  with  kernels  of  corn  and  run  to  the  coach- 
house, repeating  this  performance  several  times.  On 
going  thither  he  found  a  lame  dove  eating  the  corn 
which  the  rat  had  brought.  Such  an  action  on  the 
part  of  human  beings  would  be  looked  upon  as  a 
charitable  desire  to  relieve  the  necessities  of  a  helpless 
cripple,  and  every  one  would  be  satisfied  with  this 
simple  explanation;  but  as  a  rat  is  assumed  to  be  in- 
capable of  similar  feelings,  its  conduct  is  regarded  as 
the  resultant  of  a  series  of  impulses  of  sensation,  per- 
ception, and  conception,  under  which  the  animal  is 
led  to  do  wonderful  things  in  an  automatic  way,  with- 
out any  consciousness  of  the  purpose  for  which  it  does 
them;  and  thus  a  moral  virtue  is  obscured  and  wholly 
hidden  from  view  by  a  mass  of  metaphysical  jargon. 

A  writer  in  the  Eevue  d' Anthropologic  relates  the 
following  story:  The  owner  of  a  vegetable  garden  was 
surprised  at  the  mysterious  disappearance  of  carrots 
from  a  basket  and  asked  the  gardener  what  had  become 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  257 

of  them.  The  latter  replied  that  he  did  not  know,  but 
would  try  to  discover  the  thief.  He  accordingly  hid 
behind  the  hedge,  and  had  not  waited  long  before  the 
house  dog  came  and  carried  off  a  carrot  toward  the 
stable,  giving  it  to  one  of  the  horses,  and  wagging  his 
tail  with  delight  as  his  equine  friend  consumed  it.  The 
gardener  was  angry  and,  seizing  a  stick,  was  about  to 
punish  the  pilferer  for  his  excessive  and  rather  eccen- 
tric exhibition  of  generosity,  but  the  owner  prevented 
him  and  secretly  watched  the  dog,  who  continued  to 
run  to  and  fro  between  the  garden  and  the  stall  until 
the  entire  stock  of  carrots  was  exhausted.  Mean- 
while the  dog  never  bestowed  a  look,  much  less  a  carrot, 
on  the  horse  in  the  next  stall,  who  would  have  gladly 
eaten  a  share  of  the  stolen  fodder.  Here  we  have  a 
marked  instance  of  altruistic  sentiment  manifesting 
itself  in  faithful  friendship  and  even  gross  favouritism. 
That  the  lower  animals  are  capable  of  feeling  compas- 
sion and  exercising  charity  toward  creatures  of  their 
own  or  of  other  species  is  proved  by  numerous  and 
well-authenticated  examples  of  cats  and  dogs  carrying 
food  to  other  cats  and  dogs  that  were  utter  strangers  to 
them,  but  were  evidently  suffering  from  hunger.  In 
such  cases  the  act  of  kindness  does  not  even  have  its 
source  in  personal  attachment,  but  springs  solely  from 
the  purer  fountain  of  pity  and  disinterested  benevo- 
lence, and  contains  hardly  a  trace  of  what  Spencer  calls 
"  ego-altruistic  sentiment,"  self-gratification  being  wholly 
merged  in  the  gratification  of  others. 

Again  the  ability  to  use  tools  and  to  wield  weapons, 
which  Prantl  derives  from  the  possession  of  time-sense, 
is  not  exclusively  human.  Ants  build  bridges  with 
splinters  of  wood,  small  pebbles,  grains  of  sand,  and 


25S  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

other  available  materials,  and  tunnel  small  streams, 
and  their  skill  in  performing  such  feats  of  engineering 
and  in  meeting  any  emergencies  that  may  arise  is  al- 
most incredible  ;  but  the  testimony  of  Bates  and  Bar 
and  other  naturalists  leaves  no  doubt  as  to  the  reality 
of  these  achievements.  They  also  make  a  clever  and 
effective  use  of  implements  in  capturing  and  killing 
the  ferocious  sand  hornet,  which  they  seize  by  the  legs 
and  fasten  to  the  ground  by  means  of  sticks  and  stones, 
and  then  devour  at  their  leisure.  Here  we  have  an 
unmistakable  instance  of  the  use  of  instruments  for 
the  accomplishment  of  a  particular  purpose.  The 
same  is  true  of  the  ant-lion  when  it  prepares  a  pitfall 
and  lies  in  wait  for  its  prey,  just  as  any  hunter  would  do. 
According  to  Moggridge,  the  antennae  of  the  trap- 
door spider  {Mygale  fodiens)  are  provided  with  a  kind  of 
rake,  and  the  feet  have  prongs  resembling  the  teeth  of 
a  comb.  With  the  help  of  these  instruments  it  digs 
subterranean  tunnels  or  galleries,  which  it  tapestries 
with  a  very  fine  silken  web.  The  door,  which  closes 
the  entrance,  is  very  ingeniously  constructed  out  of 
earth,  woven  firmly  together  with  cobwebs.  This  door 
is  very  thick  and  broader  above  than  below,  so  as  to  fit 
into  the  hole  as  a  cork  does  into  the  mouth  of  a  bottle. 
Its  upper  surface  has  the  same  colour  as  the  surround- 
ing earth,  and  it  is  therefore  not  easily  discoverable.  The 
hinge  is  made  out  of  quite  thick  and  firm  fibres  of  silk, 
and  the  lock  consists  of  a  series  of  small  holes  in  which 
the  spider  can  stick  its  claws  and  hold  the  door  fast 
from  the  inside.  In  going  out  the  spider  lets  the  door 
fall  to,  and  lifts  it  up  again  in  order  to  re-enter.  This 
subterranean  habitation,  says  Moggridge,  is  as  far  su- 
perior to  that  of  the  ordinary  earth  spider  as  the  Mont 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  259 

Cenis  tunnel  is  to  a  common  ditch.  Erber,  who  studied 
the  habits  of  the  trapdoor  spiders  on  the  island  of  Tinos 
in  the  Grecian  Archipelago,  saw  them  spread  nets 
after  dark  before  their  doors  in  order  to  catch  night 
moths.  In  the  morning  these  nets  were  removed.  He 
also  speaks  of  the  marvellous  skill  and  adaptation  to 
circumstances  with  which  they  repair  any  injuries  done 
to  the  doors  or  snares.* 

Mr.  Romanes  seems  to  think  that  the  only  tool-using 
vertebrates  are  apes  and  elephants,  but  such  a  restric- 
tion is  hardly  justified  by  facts.  The  following  inci- 
dent, which  is  vouched  for  by  Mr.  William  B.  Smith, 
on  whose  farm  at  Mount  Lookout  it  occurred,  proves 
that  an  ass  may  understand  the  worth  of  weapons,  and 
be  able  to  avail  himself  of  them.  A  donkey,  which 
was  in  the  same  pasture  with  an  Alderney  bull,  was 
frequently  attacked  by  the  latter,  and  worsted  in  the 
combat.  Convinced  that  his  heels  were  no  match  for 
his  adversary's  horns,  the  ass  took  a  pole  between  his 
teeth,  and,  whirling  it  about,  whacked  his  assailant 
so  vigorously  over  the  head  that  the  latter  was  finally 
glad  to  give  up  the  contest,  and  lived  thenceforth  on  a 
peaceful  footing  with  his  long-eared  and  long-headed 
companion. 

Cats  and  dogs  open  doors  by  pressing  the  latchkey, 
or  cause  them  to  be  opened  by  pulling  the  bell  cord  or 
lifting  the  knocker  ;  and  every  farmer  knows,  to  his 
frequent  vexation,  how  readily  cows  familiarize  them- 
selves with  the  mechanism  of  gates. 

Schlagintweit  states  that  in  India  wild  elephants 

*  Verhatidlunj^en  der  k.  k.  zoologisch-botanischen  Gesellschaft. 
Wien.,  Bd.  xviii,  pp.  905,  906. 


260  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

build  walls  of  sand  and  stones  across  the  dry  beds  of 
rivers,  in  order  to  keep  the  water  from  flowing  off  dur- 
ing the  rainy  season,  so  as  to  have  a  sufficient  supply 
in  times  of  drought.  The  native  inhabitants  do  the 
same ;  but  whether  the  elephants  or  the  Hindus  were 
the  original  builders  of  these  dams  is  not  recorded. 
If  such  constructions  imply  forethought  and  mechan- 
ical skill  on  the  part  of  man,  they  presume  the  existence 
of  the  same  faculties  to  an  equal  degree  in  the  animal. 

Crows,  cormorants,  gulls,  and  other  birds  carry 
shellfish  into  the  air  and  drop  them  on  rocks,  in  order 
to  break  their  hard  covering  and  to  eat  the  flesh.  If 
the  first  fall  is  not  sufficient,  they  carry  it  up  still 
higher,  and  thus  virtually  hit  it  a  harder  blow.  If  a 
boy  cracks  a  nut  by  hurling  it  against  a  stone,  he  makes 
use  of  the  stone  as  a  tool  as  truly  as  if  he  should  take  a 
stone  in  his  hand  and  strike  the  nut  with  it.  The  for- 
mer process  is  that  employed  by  the  birds,  which  are 
in  this  respect  tool-using  animals.  There  are  rocks 
on  the  seacoast  which  have  served  generations  of  birds 
as  stationary  hammers  for  smashing  mollusks,  and  are 
evidently  regarded  by  them  as  a  permanent  slaughter- 
house. 

It  is  well  known  that  monkeys  living  near  the  sea- 
shore, where  the  ebb  tide  leaves  the  rocks  covered  with 
oysters,  evince  extraordinary  expertness  in  opening 
these  bivalves  with  sharp  stones,  just  as  a  man  would 
do  under  like  circumstances.  It  would  require  only  a 
very  slight  increase  of  intelligence  for  a  monkey  to 
learn  to  break  a  stone  into  proper  shape,  instead  of 
selecting  a  suitable  one  from  the  shingle  of  the  beach, 
and,  by  thus  fabricating  a  tool,  bring  himself  abreast, 
intellectually,    with    the    flint-clipping    man    of    the 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  261 

early  Stone  age.  Indeed,  it  has  been  suggested  by 
some  scientists  that  man  had  not  yet  appeared  upon 
the  earth  in  the  Miocene  age,  and  that  the  chipped 
flints  of  that  period  are  the  work  of  semihnman  pithe- 
coid apes  of  superior  intelligence  ;  and  there  is  nothing 
in  the  theory  of  evolution  or  the  facts  of  natural  his- 
tory which  would  render  such  a  supposition  absurd. 
Monkeys  use  stones  as  hammers  and  sticks  as  levers, 
and  appreciate  the  advantage  to  be  derived  from  this 
the  simplest  of  the  mechanical  powers.  With  them, 
as  with  primitive  or  uneducated  men,  this  knowledge 
is  purely  empirical,  a  product  of  experience,  and  does 
not  imply  a  perception  of  mathematical  truths  or  prin- 
ciples any  more  than  the  taking  of  a  short  cut  diag- 
onally across  a  field  involves  a  knowledge  of  the  relation 
of  the  hypothenuse  to  the  other  two  sides  of  a  right- 
angled  triangle.  In  neither  case  is  theie  any  ques- 
tion of  what  Prantl  calls  "  spontaneous  mathematical 
thinking." 

Dr.  Macgowan,  who  has  resided  in  China  since  1843, 
and  travelled  extensively  in  the  Flowery  Kingdom, 
states  in  a  recent  number  of  the  North  China  Daily 
News  (1893)  that  there  exists  in  the  mountainous  and 
densely  wooded  region  of  Manchuria  near  the  Great 
Wall  a  species  of  ape  which  prepares  from  berries  two 
sorts  of  wine,  one  greenish  and  the  other  reddish,  and 
preserves  them  in  earthern  jars  for  winter  use,  when 
the  springs  and  rivers  are  frozen.  The  jars  are  also 
made  by  the  apes  and  are  fully  equal  in  workmanship 
to  the  pottery  of  many  savage  tribes.  Dr.  Macgowan 
asserts  that  there  is  in  the  province  of  Chekiang  a 
kind  of  orang-outang  which  shows  the  same  skill  and 
prudence  in  manufacturing  and  storing  beverages  for 


262  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

the  time  of  need.  It  is  possible  that  the  jars  of  wine 
may  have  been  stolen  by  the  monkeys,  although  the 
mountains  in  which  they  live  are  not  inhabited  by  hu- 
man beings.  According  to  Chinese  authorities  the 
orang-outangs  of  Chekiang  have  been  observed  pounding 
berries  and  other  fruits  in  stone  mortars. 

Simian  dexterity  is  greatly  increased  by  association 
with  human  beings  and  by  observation  of  their  doings. 
The  owner  of  a  pet  monkey,  which  annoyed  him  by 
ringing  the  servants'  bell,  tied  several  knots  in  the 
cord,  in  order  to  make  it  shorter  and  place  it  out  of 
the  animal's  reach.  But  the  crafty  creature  was  not  to 
be  thwarted  by  such  a  clumsy  device,  and,  climbing 
up  on  a  chair,  artfully  untied  all  the  knots,  and  then 
gave  the  bell  a  succession  of  violent  jerks  to  signalize 
his  triumph. 

A  monkey  in  the  Zoological  Garden  at  Philadelphia 
came  into  possession  of  a  marble  and  a  hickory  nut 
which  he  tried  in  vain  to  crack  with  his  teeth.  After 
conferring  with  two  other  monkeys  and  chattering 
in  a  lively  manner,  he  scraped  away  the  sawdust  so  as 
to  expose  a  space  about  two  feet  square  of  the  zinc 
floor  of  his  cage.  He  then  climbed  up  on  a  crossbar, 
and  from  this  vantage  ground  hurled  the  marble  with 
all  his  force  against  the  zinc  and  broke  it  into  pieces, 
but  found  nothing  edible  inside.  He  then  attempted 
to  break  the  nut  in  the  same  manner,  but  without  suc- 
cess. After  several  futile  efforts  he  held  another  con- 
sultation with  his  companions  and  then  handed  the 
nut  through  the  bars  to  a  bystander,  who  cracked  and 
returned  it.  The  monkey  then  divided  it  into  three 
portions,  of  which  he  gave  one  to  each  of  his  friends 
and  advisers.     The  monkey  in  this  case  acted  as  a 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND   MEN.  263 

child  would  have  done  under  similar  circumstances, 
and  showed  a  like  degree  and  kind  of  reflection  and 
ingenuous  confidence.  It  is  probable,  too,  that  his 
conduct  was  somewhat  influenced  by  previous  study  of 
mankind. 

In  the  Transvaal  monkeys  have  been  found  to  be 
very  serviceable  in  the  gold  mines.  Captain  E.  Moss 
states  that  he  has  twenty-four  monkeys  thus  employed 
and  that  they  do  the  work  of  about  seven  able-bodied 
men,  and  "  it  is  no  reflection  upon  the  human  labourers 
to  say  that  they  do  a  class  of  work  a  man  can  not  do  as 
well  as  they.  In  many  instances  they  lend  valuable  aid 
where  a  man  is  useless.  They  gather  up  the  small 
pieces  of  quartz  that  would  be  passed  unnoticed  by  the 
workmen,  and  pile  them  up  in  little  heaps  that  can 
be  easily  gathered  up  in  a  shovel  and  thrown  into  the 
mill.  They  are  exceedingly  adept  at  catching  the 
little  particles,  and  the  very  things  that  the  human  eye 
would  easily  pass  over  never  escape  their  sharp  eyes." 
He  then  relates  how  the  idea  of  thus  making  use  of 
them  first  occurred  to  him,  and  it  is  a  pleasure  to  learn 
that  they  are  not  forced  to  work,  but  simply  do  of  their 
own  free  will  what  they  see  others  doing. 

"When  I  went  digging  gold  I  had  two  monkeys 
that  were  exceedingly  interesting  pets.  They  were 
constantly  following  me  about  the  mines,  and  one  day 
I  noticed  that  they  were  busily  engaged  in  gathering 
up  little  bits  of  quartz  and  putting  them  in  piles.  They 
seemed  to  enjoy  the  labour  very  much,  and  would  go 
to  the  mines  every  morning  and  work  there  during  the 
day.  It  did  not  take  me  long  to  learn  their  value  as 
labourers,  and  I  decided  to  procure  more.  So  I  im- 
mediately procured  a  number,  and  now  have  two  dozen 


264  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

working  daily  in  and  about  the  mines.  It  is  exceed- 
ingly interesting  to  watch  my  two  pet  monkeys  teach 
the  new  ones  how  to  work,  and  still  stranger  to  see  how 
the  newcomers  take  to  it.  They  work  just  as  they 
please,  sometimes  going  down  into  the  mines  when  they 
have  cleared  up  all  the  debris  on  the  outside.  They 
live  and  work  together  without  quarrelling  any  more 
than  men  do.  They  are  quite  methodical  in  their  hab- 
its, and  go  to  work  and  finish  up  in  the  same  manner 
as  human  beings  would  do  under  similar  circum- 
stances." 

Prantl  also  characterizes  man  as  the  only  animal  fa- 
miliar with  the  use  of  fire,  and  capable  of  applying  it  to 
culinary  and  economical  purposes  and  to  the  increase 
of  personal  comfort.  But  this  attainment  is  by  no 
means  common  to  all  mankind.  Homo  sapiens  inhab- 
ited the  earth  for  ages  before  he  discovered  methods 
of  generating  this  element  and  making  it  subservient 
to  his  interests.  The  habitual  use  of  fire  is  the  sign 
of  a  very  considerable  advancement  toward  civilization, 
and  marks  an  important  epoch  in  the  evolution  of  the 
race.  Chimpanzees,  gorillas,  and  orang-outangs  have 
been  repeatedly  seen  bringing  brushwood  and  throwing 
it  on  the  camp  fires  which  travellers  have  left  burning, 
showing  that  they  have  learned  by  observation  how  to 
keep  up  a  fire,  although  they  have  no  means  and  do  not 
understand  the  art  of  Idndling  it.  By  associating  with 
man  they  soon  acquire  this  knowledge,  igniting  friction 
matches,  and  often  have  to  be  watched  carefully,  like 
children,  lest  they  should  do  immense  mischief  unwitting- 
ly as  incendiaries.  The  same  is  true  of  ravens,  which, 
when  tamed,  are  fond  of  throwing  pieces  of  paper  and 
other  light  combustibles  on  the  glowing  coals,  and  see- 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  2G5 

ing  them  flash  into  flame.  This  favourite  pastime  ren- 
ders them  exceedingly  dangerous  inmates  of  the  house ; 
and  it  is  probably  this  bird  that  was  spoken  of  by  Pliny 
as  avis  incendiaria. 

Ants  store  in  their  chambered  hillocks  certain  sub- 
stances which,  by  fermentation,  produce  quite  a  high 
temperature,  and  are  put  there  for  the  sole  purpose  of 
generating  heat  and  warming  their  dwellings.  Some 
birds,  as,  for  example,  the  Australian  megapode,  or 
jungle  fowl,  hatch  their  eggs  by  artificial  heat,  result- 
ing from  the  decomposition  of  the  leaves  and  decaying 
substances  with  which  they  cover  them;  raising  large 
mounds  that  are  sometimes  twenty  or  thirty  metres  in 
circumference,  and  serve  as  incubators  for  successive 
generations  of  birds.  Thus,  while  it  is  true  that  ani- 
mals do  not  make  use  of  fire,  they  are  not  ignorant  of 
the  properties  of  heat,  which  they  turn  to  practical  ac- 
count in  matters  of  domestic  economy  and  household 
life. 

It  is  questionable  whether  Prantl's  statement  that 
animals  "  expect  an  effect,  but  not  a  logical  sequence, 
and  seek  a  cause,  but  not  a  logical  ground,'^  can  be 
maintained.  The  following  incident,  related  by  Dr. 
Schomburgk,  director  of  the  zoological  garden  at  Ade- 
laide, in  South  Australia,  would  seem  to  render  such  a 
distinction  untenable.  An  old  monkey  of  the  genus 
Macacus  sinicus,  which  was  confined  in  a  cage  with  two 
younger  ones,  flew  at  the  keeper  one  day  as  he  was  sup- 
plying them  with  fresh  water,  and  bit  him  so  severely 
in  the  wrist  as  to  injure  the  sinews  and  artery  and  to 
endanger  his  life.  Schomburgk  ordered  the  animal  to 
be  shot,  but  as  an  attendant  approached  the  cage  with  a 
gun  the  culprit  showed  the  greatest  consternation,  fled 


ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

into  the  sleeping  apartment  of  the  cage,  and  could  not 
be  induced  by  any  offers  of  tempting  food  to  come  out 
of  this  place  of  refuge.  It  must  be  added  that  the 
monkeys  were  perfectly  accustomed  to  firearms,  which 
had  been  frequently  used  for  killing  rats  near  the  cage, 
and  had  never  manifested  the  slightest  fear  of  them. 
Even  now  the  other  monkeys  ate  their  food  as  usual, 
with  a  conscience  void  of  offence,  and  were  not  at  all 
disturbed  by  the  sight  of  the  murderous  weapon.  No 
sooner  had  the  man  with  the  gun  withdrawn  and  con- 
cealed himself  than  the  old  monkey  sneaked  out,  and, 
snatching  some  of  the  food,  rushed  back  into  his  asy- 
lum; but  when  he  tried  to  repeat  this  experiment  a 
keeper  closed  the  sliding-door  from  without,  and  thus 
cut  off  his  retreat.  As  the  man  with  the  gun  drew  near 
again,  the  poor  monkey  seemed  quite  beside  himself  with 
terror.  He  first  tried  to  open  the  sliding-door,  then 
ran  into  every  nook  and  corner  of  the  cage  in  search  of 
some  way  of  escape,  and  finally,  in  despair,  threw  him- 
self flat  on  the  floor  and  awaited  his  fate,  which  soon 
overtook  him.  The  conduct  of  the  monkey  in  this 
case  can  be  explained  only  by  assuming  the  animal  to 
have  been  endowed  with  a  moral  sense  and  a  logical  fac- 
ulty, implying  a  clear  perception  of  right  and  wrong,  a 
consciousness  of  guilt,  a  knowledge  of  the  use  of  fire- 
arms, and  quite  a  complicated  process  of  reasoning 
from  these  premises  to  a  perfectly  correct  conclusion. 
The  following  case  of  quite  recent  occurrence  proves 
that  other  animals  besides  monkeys  are  capable  of  rea- 
soning deductively.  Mr.  Allen  H.  Norton,  the  owner 
of  a  farm  at  Winsted,  Conn.,  had  a  dog  of  mixed 
breed,  partly  cocker  spaniel  and  partly  hound,  which 
was  a  good  hunter  and  had  been  very  serviceable  in 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  267 

catching  raccoons  and  other  small  game.  In  the  spring 
of  1897  the  dog,  now  twelve  years  old,  was  getting  rather 
feeble  and  had  lost  some  of  its  teeth,  so  that  Mr.  Norton, 
thinking  that  he  had  no  further  use  for  it,  since  it  had 
ceased  to  be  useful  to  him,  concluded  to  have  it  shot. 
For  this  purpose  he  gave  it  over  to  the  tenant,  who  took 
it  into  the  field,  put  his  gun  on  the  ground,  and  began 
to  dig  a  grave  for  the  faithful  animal,  which  lay  beside 
the  weapon  intended  soon  to  end  its  life,  and  watched 
the  hole  as  it  gradually  grew  deeper.  When  the  work 
was  nearly  finished  the  dog  suddenly  sprang  to  its  feet 
and  ran  away  in  great  haste.  The  man  tried  to  call 
it  back,  but  for  the  first  time  on  record  it  refused  to 
obey,  and  rushing  to  the  bank  of  the  river,  swam  to  the 
opposite  side,  disappeared  in  the  woods,  and  never  re- 
turned. This  instance  is  even  more  remarkable  than 
that  of  Dr.  Schomburgk's  monkey,  since  the  acute  exer- 
cise of  the  logical  faculty  was  not  stimu  ated  by  the 
prickings  of  conscience. 

Perhaps  the  most  human  of  anthropoid  apes,  as  re- 
gards intelligence,  is  a  species  of  chimpanzee  called  the 
soko,  first  discovered  by  Livingstone,  and  most  fully 
described  by  him  in  his  I^ast  Journals.  The  teeth  of 
these  creatures,  he  says,  "  are  slightly  human,  but  their 
canines  show  the  beast  by  their  large  development. 
The  hands,  or  rather  the  fingers,  are  like  those  of  the 
natives.  They  live  in  communities  consisting  of  about 
a  dozen  individuals,  and  are  strictly  monogamous  in 
their  conjugal  relations,  and  vegetarian,  or  rather  fru- 
givorous,  in  their  diet,  their  favourite  food  being  bana- 
nas." The  aborigines,  the  Manyuema,  are,  on  the  con- 
trary, cannibals,  and  are  described  by  Livingstone  as 
"  the  lowest  of  the  low."  One  of  them,  who  had  killed 
18 


268  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

a  woman,  offered  his  grandmother  to  be  killed  in  expia- 
tion of  his  offence,  and  this  vicarious  punishment  was 
accepted  as  satisfactory.  Even  the  sokos  have  a  higher 
and  more  correct  conception  of  justice  than  this;  at  least 
they  do  not  make  the  innocent  atone  for  the  crimes  of 
the  guilty.  If  a  soko  "  tries  to  seize  the  female  of  an- 
other, he  is  caught  on  the  ground,  and  all  unite  in  box- 
ing and  biting  the  offender."  "  Numbers  of  them  come 
down  in  the  forest  within  a  hundred  yards  of  our  camp, 
and  would  be  unknown  but  for  giving  tongue  like  fox- 
hounds. This  is  their  nearest  approach  to  speech.  A 
man  hoeing  was  stalked  by  a  soko  and  seized.  He 
roared  out,  but  the  soko  giggled  and  grinned,  and  left 
him,  as  if  he  had  done  it  in  play."  It  is  evident  that 
these  animals  have  some  sense  of  humour  and  appreciate 
a  practical  joke.  They  are  inoffensive  and  unaggres- 
sive, but  fearless  and  energetic  in  self-defence.  They 
never  molest  women  or  unarmed  men,  but  if  any  one  ap- 
proaches them  with  a  spear  they  rush  upon  him  and 
wrest  the  weapon  from  his  hands.  If  struck  with  a 
dart  or  an  arrow,  they  pull  it  out,  and  stanch  the  blood 
by  stuffing  leaves  into  the  wound.  The  natives  recog- 
nise their  harmless  and  human  character,  and  say, 
*'  Soko  is  a  man,  and  nothing  bad  in  him." 

Sometimes  they  kidnap  a  child  and  take  it  up  into  a 
tree,  but  they  never  hurt  it,  and  are  ready  to  exchange 
it  at  any  time  for  a  bunch  of  bananas.  Perhaps  the 
robbery  is  for  the  sake  of  the  ransom.  When  roaming 
through  the  forest,  the  female  usually  carries  her  in- 
fant in  her  arms;  but  in  crossing  a  glade  or  other  open 
ground,  where  they  would  be  more  exposed  to  danger, 
the  father  takes  the  child,  and  returns  it  to  the  mother 
as  soon  as  they  enter  the  wood  again.     They  are  ex- 


IDEATION  IN  ANIMALS  AND  MEN.  269 

tremely  fond  of  assembling  in  a  remote  part  of  the  for- 
est and  drumming  on  hollow  trees  and  other  resonant 
objects,  accompan3dng  this  fearful  din  with  loud  yells, 
like  sopranos  and  tenors  of  strong  pulmonary  powers 
trying  to  outshriek  the  clash  and  clang  of  a  Wagnerian 
orchestra.  This  deafening  noise  does  not  differ  greatly 
from  "  the  natives'  embryotic  music,"  and  is  quite  as  har- 
monious and  pleasant  to  the  ear  as  much  of  the  music 
of  the  Chinese  and  other  Oriental  peoples. 

Livingstone  had  a  young  female  soko,  which,  after 
having  been  petted  for  some  time,  was  "  quite  like  a 
spoiled  child."  She  enjoyed  shaking  hands,  and  took 
as  much  pleasure  in  this  tiresome  manual  ceremony  as 
any  American  citizen  who  honours  the  President  of  the 
United  States  by  calling  on  him  at  the  White  House. 
She  liked  to  be  carried  about,  and  "would  beg  people  to 
take  her  in  their  arms.  If  they  refused,  she  seemed 
greatly  aggrieved,  and  would  make  a  Wj-y  face,  as  if 
about  to  burst  into  tears,  and  wring  her  hands,  appar- 
ently in  severe  distress  of  mind.  She  learned  to  eat 
whatever  was  set  before  her,  drew  grass  and  leaves 
around  her  for  a  bed,  and  covered  herself  with  a  mat 
when  she  went  to  sleep.  She  could  untie  a  knot  with 
her  fingers  and  thumbs  "in  quite  a  systematic  way," 
'^  looked  daggers  "  at  any  one  who  interfered  with  her 
doings,  and  resented  every  attempt  to  touch  what  she 
regarded  as  her  personal  property. 

Indeed,  the  idea  of  personal  property,  in  distinction 
from  communal  property — such,  for  example,  as  the 
provisions  stored  by  ants  for  winter — is  quite  as  strong- 
ly developed  in  many  of  the  higher  species  of  animals 
as  in  some  of  the  lower  races  of  men. 


CHAPTER  YIII. 

SPEECH    AS    A    BARRIER    BETWEEN"    MAN"    AN'D    BEAST. 

Max  Miiller's  theory.  Hobbes's  pun.  Roots  as  ultimate  facts. 
Sanskrit  illustrations  of  their  formation.  Example  of  "  quack  " 
as  a  prolific  root.  Dr.  Hun's  specimen  of  child  language. 
Horatio  Hale's  theory  of  the  origin  of  tribal  dialects.  Meta- 
morphoses of  organic  life  and  transformations  of  the  roots  of 
speech.  A  philological  ultimatum.  General  concepts  im- 
properly denied  to  animals.  Home  Tooke's  absurd  statement. 
Ability  of  animals  to  count  and  to  classify  objects.  Words 
not  the  only  symbols  of  thought.  Whitney's  doctrine  of  lan- 
guage as  a  social  institution.  Pantomimic  expression  in  man 
and  animals.  Jager's  distinction  between  emotional  language 
and  the  language  of  thought.  Worthlessness  of  speculation 
without  careful  observation.  Aphasia.  Animals  learn  to  un- 
derstand human  speech.  "  Nursery  philology."  Language 
evolved  out  of  roots  as  vital  organisms  out  of  protoplasm. 
Clifford's  poetic  description  of  atoms.  Noire's  fantastic  syner- 
gastic  theory.  The  Homo  alalus  as  a  social  being.  Speech 
not  a  supernatural  endowment.  Bow-wow,  pooh-pooh,  and 
yo-he-ho  theories.  Psophos  vs.  phone.  Animal  utterances 
not  mere  unconceptional  noises.  Landois  on  animal  voices. 
No  break  in  the  evolution  of  expression.  Weir  and  Janet  on 
the  vocal  organs  of  ants.  Philology  in  the  menagerie.  Gar- 
ner's studies  of  simian  speech.  Successful  use  of  the  phono- 
graph. Roots  and  concepts  in  the  language  of  animals.  Hy- 
pothetical language  of  the  "  missing  link."  Investigations  of 
animal  speech  by  Wenzel,  Radeau,  Jules  Richard,  and  others. 
Remarkable  parrots.  Superior  advantages  possessed  by  Gar- 
ner for  prosecuting  his  researches.  His  failure  to  accomplish 
270 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        271 

what  he  expected  to  do  in  Africa.  Dybowski's  account  of  it. 
His  own  report  of  the  expedition  confirmatory  of  Dybowski's 
criticism. 

Max  Mullek,  after  admitting  "the  extraordinary 
accounts  of  the  intellect,  the  understanding,  the  cau- 
tion, the  judgment,  the  sagacity,  acuteness,  cleverness, 
genius,  or  even  social  virtues  of  animals,"  intrenches 
himself  hehind  the  "  one  palpable  fact,  namely,  that, 
whatever  animals  do  or  do  not  do,  no  animal  has  ever 
spoken.^'  This  assertion  is  not  strictly  true.  Parrots 
and  ravens  utter  articulate  sounds  as  distinctly  as  the 
average  cockney,  and  in  most  cases  make  quite  as  in- 
telligent and  edifying  use  of  them  for  the  expression  of 
ideas. 

That  no  animal  has  ever  made  a  natural  and  ha- 
bitual use  of  articulate  speech  for  the  communication 
of  its  thoughts  and  feelings  is  a  truism  which  it  would 
seem  superfluous  to  emphasize  or  italicize.  Equally 
irrelevant  to  the  point  at  issue  is  the  statement  that 
"  in  every  book  on  logic  language  is  quoted  as  the  spe- 
cific difference  between  man  and  other  beings."  It  is 
not  by  the  definitions  of  logicians  that  questions  of 
this  kind  are  to  be  decided.  The  Greeks  called  beasts 
speechless  creatures  (ra  aAoya)  just  as  they  called  for- 
eigners tongueless  (ayAcorrot),  meaning  thereby  per- 
sons whose  language  was  unintelligible  to  them;  and 
the  epithet  was  no  more  appropriate  in  the  former  case 
than  in  the  latter.  It  was  for  the  same  reason  that  the 
Eoman  poet  Ovid,  when  banished  to  the  Pontus,  charac- 
terized himself  as  a  barbarian,  because  his  language 
was  not  understood  by  the  inhabitants  of  that  country — 
larharus  hie  ego  sum;,  quia  non  intelligor  ulli.  But  such 
expressions  must  not  be  taken  too  literally. 


272  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Hobbes  makes  speaking  the  test  of  rationality — 
homo  animal  rationale,  quia  orationale — and  assumes 
both  powers  to  be  the  exclusive  property  of  man;  but 
his  pithy  statement  is  a  quibble  in  fact  as  well  as  in 
form,  and  much  better  as  a  pun  than  as  a  psycholog- 
ical proposition.  "  Language  is  our  Eubicon,"  says 
Max  Miiller,  "  and  no  brute  will  dare  to  cross  it."  Why 
not?  Because,  if  he  does,  our  definitions  will  transform 
him  from  a  brute  into  a  man.  "In  a  series  of  forms 
graduating  from  some  apelike  creature  to  man,"  Max 
Miiller  maintains  that  the  point  where  the  animal  ceases 
and  the  man  begins  can  be  determined  with  absolute 
precision,  since  "  it  would  be  coincident  with  the  begin- 
ning of  the  radical  period  of  language,  with  the  first 
formation  of  a  general  idea  embodied  in  the  only  form 
in  which  we  find  it  embodied,  namely,  in  the  roots  of 
our  language." 

In  reply  to  the  statement  that  "both  man  and 
monkey  are  born  without  language,"  Miiller  asks  "  why 
a  man  always  learns  to  speak,  a  monkey  never."  This 
query,  if  it  is  to  be  regarded  as  anything  more  than  a 
bit  of  banter,  implies  a  gross  misconception  of  the 
theory  of  evolution,  as  though  it  involved  the  develop- 
ment of  an  individual  monkey  into  an  individual  man. 
One  might  as  well  deny  the  descent  of  the  dog  from  the 
wolf  because  a  dog  always  learns  to  bark,  a  wolf  never. 
In  the  course  of  ages,  and  as  the  result  of  long  processes 
of  evolution  and  transformation,  monkeys  have  learned 
to  speak,  but  when  they  have  acquired  this  faculty  we 
call  them  men. 

Max  Miiller  stops  at  roots  or  "phonetic  cells"  as 
"ultimate  facts  in  the  analysis  of  language,"  and  vir- 
tually says  to  the  philologist,  "  Thus  far  shalt  thou 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        273 

go,  and  no  farther,  and  here  shall  thy  researches  be 
stayed."  "  The  scholar,"  he  declares,  "  begins  and  ends 
with  these  phonetic  types;  or,  if  he  ignores  them,  and 
traces  words  back  to  the  cries  of  animals  or  to  the  inter- 
jections of  men,  he  does  so  at  his  peril.  The  philoso- 
pher goes  beyond,  and  he  discovers  in  the  line  which 
separates  rational  from  emotional  language,  conceptual 
from  intuitional  knowledge — in  the  roots  of  language 
he  discovers  the  true  barrier  between  Man  and  Beast." 

The  philologist,  who  recognises  in  the  roots  of  lan- 
guage the  Ultima  Thule  beyond  which  he  dare  not 
push  his  investigations,  confesses  thereby  his  incompe- 
tency to  solve  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  language, 
and  must  resign  this  field  of  inquiry  to  the  zoopsycholo- 
gist,  who^  freeing  himself  from  the  trammels  and  illu- 
sions of  metaphysics,  seeks  to  find  a  firm  basis  for  his 
science  in  the  strict  and  systematic  study  of  facts.  Im- 
agine the  folly  of  the  physiologist  who  s  lould  say  to 
his  fellow-scientists:  "In  your  researches  you  must 
begin  and  end  with  cells.  If,  in  studying  organic  struc- 
tures, you  go  back  of  cells  and  endeavour  to  discover 
the  laws  underlying  their  origin,  you  do  so  at  your 
peril.  Beware  of  the  dangercus  seductions  of  cytoblast 
and  cyiogenesis  and  the  treacherous  quagmires  of  pro- 
toplasm." 

Nevertheless,  this  attitude  of  mind  is  natural  enough 
to  the  philologist,  who  is  so  absorbed  in  the  laws  which 
govern  the  transmutations  of  words  that  he  comes  to 
regard  these  metamorphoses  as  finalities,  and  never  goes 
behind  and  beyond  them.  We  must  look,  therefore, 
not  to  comparative  philology,  but  to  comparative  ps}^- 
chology,  for  the  discovery  of  the  origin  of  language. 
Philology  has  to  do  with  the  growth  and  development 


274:  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

of  speech  out  of  roots,  which  are  assumed  to  be  ultimate 
and  unanalyzable  elements,  like  the  purely  hypothetical 
particles  which  the  physicist  calls  atoms;  but  as  to  the 
nature  and  genesis  of  roots  themselves  the  philologist 
of  to-day  is  as  puzzled  and  perplexed  as  was  the  old 
Vedic  poet  when,  in  the  presence  of  the  universe  and 
its  mysterious  generation,  he  could  only  utter  the  pa- 
thetic and  helpless  cry,  "Who  indeed  knows,  who  can 
declare,  whence  it  sprang,  whence  this  evolution?" 

Doubtless  the  emotional  stage  precedes  the  intel- 
lectual or  rational  stage  in  the  growth  of  language,  but 
the  former  mode  of  expression  does  not  cease  when  the 
latter  begins,  nor  is  it  possible  to  draw  a  fixed  and  fast 
line  of  demarcation  between  them.  Pa  and  ma  are 
the  roots  of  patri  and  mdtri,  and  mean  in  Sanskrit  to 
protect  and  to  form,  indicating  the  function  of  the 
father  as  the  defender,  and  of  the  mother  as  the  mould- 
er, of  children.  But  how  did  they  come  to  have  these 
significations?  Surely  the  infant  who  first  used  these 
expressions — and  they  are  universally  recognised  as  be- 
longing to  the  vocabulary  of  babes — did  not  associate 
with  them  the  ideas  which  philologists  now  discover, 
and  which  grammarians  and  etymologists  at  a  very  early 
period  put  into  them.  How  arbitrary  these  inferences 
are  is  evident  from  the  variety  of  interpretations  of 
which  such  words  are  susceptible.  Thus  md  means  also 
to  measure;  hence  the  moon,  as  the  measurer  of  time, 
was  called  mdtri;  and  from  this  point  of  view  the  term 
for  mother  was  explained  as  referring  to  her  office  as 
the  head  of  the  household,  who  kept  the  keys  of  closet 
and  pantry,  and  meted  out  to  the  servants  and  other 
members  of  the  family  the  things  necessary  for  them. 
It  is  furthermore  a  suspicious  circumstance  touching 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        275 

the  habits  of  the  Indo-Aryan's  progenitors  that  pa 
means  to  drink,  and  patri  signifies  a  drinker;  and  for 
aught  we  know  the  verbal  coincidence  may  not  be  acci- 
dental. As  regards  ma,  it  means  also  bleating  as  a  goat, 
and  occurs  in  this  sense  in  the  Eig-Veda;  and  it  is  prob- 
able that  in  this  onomatopoetic  expression  we  come 
nearer  to  the  real  origin  of  the  word  for  mother. 

There  is  a  vast  deal  of  vague  speculation  and  unten- 
able assertion  concerning  the  origin  and  formation  of 
roots  in  language.  In  Sanskrit,  for  example,  there  are 
three  radical  words  gar,  meaning  respectively  to  swal- 
low, to  make  a  noise,  and  to  wake.  It  is  conceivable, 
says  Max  Miiller,  that  the  first  two  of  these  roots  may 
have  been  originally  one  and  the  same,  and  that  gar, 
from  meaning  to  swallow,  may  have  come  to  mean  the 
indistinct  and  disagreeable  noise  which  often  attends 
deglutition,  and  which  in  speaking  is  called  swallowing 
letters  or  words.  Yet  the  third  root,  he  adds,  can 
hardly  be  traced  back  to  the  same  source,  but  has  the 
right  to  be  treated  as  a  legitimate  and  independent  com- 
panion of  the  other  roots.  From  this  example  he  de- 
duces the  general  principle  that  if  roots  have  the  same 
form,  but  a  different  meanirg,  they  are  to  be  regarded 
as  originally  different,  notwithstanding  their  outward 
resemblance.  He  then  passes  from  etymology  to  em- 
bryology, and  reasons  from  analogy  that  "  if  two  germs, 
though  apparently  alike,  grow,  under  all  circumstances, 
the  one  always  into  an  ape  and  never  beyond,  the  other 
always  into  a  man  and  never  below,  then  the  two  germs, 
though  indistinguishable  at  first,  and  though  following 
for  a  time  the  same  line  of  embryonic  development, 
are  different  from  the  beginning,  whatever  their  begin- 
ning may  have  been." 


276  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

In  this  statement  he  begs  the  whole  question  at 
issue;  and  the  philological  illustration  which  he  brings 
to  bear  upon  an  anthropological  theory  for  the  purpose 
of  refuting  it  is  itself  exceedingly  questionable,  since 
nothing  is  easier  or  would  be  more  natural  than  to 
derive  gar,  to  wake,  from  gar,  to  make  a  noise;  so  that 
all  three  roots  not  only  may  have  had,  but  probably  did 
have,  a  common  origin.  In  no  case  can  it  be  positively 
affirmed  that  roots  of  the  same  form  are  not  of  the  same 
origin,  however  widely  they  may  differ  from  one  another 
in  signification. 

One  of  Darwin's  grandchildren,  as  Mr.  Komanes 
states,  called  a  duck  "quack,"  and  by  a  special  and 
easily  intelligible  association  called  water  also  "  quack.'' 
The  same  term  was  afterward  extended  to  all  fowls  and 
winged  creatures  and  to  all  fluids.  A  French  sou  and 
an  American  dollar  were  called  "  quack "  on  account 
of  the  eagle  stamped  upon  them,  and  the  same  name 
was  then  given  to  all  coins.  Thus  "  quack  "  came  to 
mean  bird,  fly,  angel,  wine,  pond,  river,  shilling,  medal, 
etc.,  and  it  is  easy  to  trace  every  step  of  the  process  by 
which  it  acquired  these  various  significations. 

According  to  Max  Muller's  reasoning,  "quack"  in 
the  sense  of  duck  or  bird  must  have  a  radically  differ- 
ent origin  from  "  quack  "  in  the  sense  of  pond  or  shil- 
ling. But  how  do  we  know  that  all  roots  having  the 
same  form,  but  different  meanings,  may  not  have  origi- 
nated in  this  manner?  Because  we  can  no  longer  trace 
a  word  through  all  phases  of  its  development  and  meta- 
morphosis is  no  proof  that  the  development  and  meta- 
morphosis never  took  place.  The  evolution  of  the  word 
"  quack  "  in  the  vocabulary  of  the  aforesaid  child  shows 
furthermore  that  a  purely  onomatopoetic  root  is  not 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        277 

always  sterile,  but  may  be  prodigiously  and  puzzlingly 
prolific,  germinating  in  the  mind  of  the  primitive  man, 
and  springing  up  and  bearing  fruit  fifty  or  a  hundred- 
fold. 

When  we  speak  of  a  train  of  cars  as  "telescoped/' 
this  use  of  the  word  has  nothing  in  common  with  its 
primary  and  etymological  meaning,  and  can  be  under- 
stood only  by  a  knowledge  of  the  construction  of  a  tele- 
scope out  of  concentric  tubes  sliding  into  each  other. 
Again,  the  telescopic  chimney  of  a  war  vessel  is  not  a 
point  of  far-seeing  observation,  as  the  composition  of 
the  qualifying  word  would  imply,  but  a  chimney  which 
may  be  shoved  together  endwise,  and  thus  put  out  of 
reach  of  the  enemy's  shot. 

Dr.  Hun  records  in  The  Monthly  Journal  of  Psycho- 
logical Medicine  (1868)  the  case  of  a  girl  who  invented 
a  language  of  her  own,  and  taught  it  to  her  younger 
brother.  Papa  and  mamma  used  separately  meant  fa- 
ther and  mother;  but  when  linked  together  in  the  com- 
pound papa-mamma  they  meant  church,  prayer  book, 
praying,  and  other  acts  of  religious  worship,  because  the 
child  saw  her  parents  going  to  church  together.  Gar 
odo  meant  "  Send  for  the  horse,"  and  also  paper  and 
pencil,  because  the  order  for  the  horse  was  often  writ- 
ten. Bau  signified  soldier  and  bishop,  because  both 
seemed  to  be  more  gorgeously  dressed  than  other  per- 
sons. Here  the  clothes  made  the  man,  and  furnished 
the  sole  basis  of  his  classification.  It  needed  only  the 
simplest  and  most  superficial  point  of  association  in 
order  to  attach  the  most  diverse  significations  to  the 
same  word. 

To  the  objection  that  these  examples  are  mere  child- 
ish whimseys,  and  that  languages  never  originate  and 


278  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

grow  up  in  this  manner,  it  may  be  replied  that  such  an 
assertion  assumes  the  very  point  to  be  proved.  Mr. 
Horatio  Hale  maintains  that  the  aboriginal  tongues  of 
South  America  and  South  Africa  were  produced  in 
precisely  this  way.  He  thinks,  too,  that  the  numerous 
tribal  dialects  west  of  the  Eocky  Mountains  had  their 
origin  in  the  isolation  of  orphaned  children,  and  that 
such  a  result  is  possible,  and  indeed  inevitable,  wherever 
the  climate  and  other  external  conditions  are  favour- 
able to  the  survival  of  small  children  bereft  of  their 
parents  and  separated  from  their  kinsmen. 

Again,  Max  Miiller  observes,  in  explanation  of  the 
manner  in  which  roots  were  formed,  that,  "  after  a  long 
struggle,  the  uncertain  phonetic  imitations  of  special 
impressions  became  the  definite  phonetic  representations 
of  general  concepts."  Thus  "there  must  have  been 
many  imitations  of  the  falling  of  stones,  trees,  leaves, 
rivers,  rain,  and  hail,  but  in  the  end  they  were  all  com- 
bined in  the  simple  root  pat,  expressive  of  quick  move- 
ment, whether  in  falling,  flying,  or  running.  By  giving 
up  all  that  could  remind  the  hearer  of  any  special  sound 
of  rushing  objects,  the  root  pat  became  fitted  as  a  sign 
of  the  general  concept  of  quick  movement."  There 
was  a  great  number  of  "imitative  sounds  of  falling, 
out  of  which  pat  was  selected,  or  out  of  which  pat,  by 
a  higher  degree  of  fitness,  struggled  into  life  and  fixity." 
So,  too,  the  prolific  root  mar,  to  grind  or  to  break, 
"  must  be  looked  upon  as  tuned  down  from  innumerable 
imitations  of  the  sounds  of  breaking,  crushing,  crunch- 
ing, crashing,  smashing,  mashing,  cracking,  creaking,  rat- 
tling and  clattering,  mauling  and  marring,  till  at  last, 
after  removing  all  that  seemed  too  special,  there  remained 
the  smooth  and  manageable  Ar^^an  root  of  mar" 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        279 

Now,  pray,  when  did  this  remarkahle  evolution, 
which  implies  the  close  and  continuous  exercise  of  rare 
powers  of  comparison  and  abstraction  and  the  perfect 
maturity  of  the  intellectual  faculties,  take  place? 
"  Language,"  we  are  informed,  "  presupposes  the  forma- 
tion of  concepts,"  and  "  all  such  concepts  are  embodied 
in  roots."  The  formation  of  these  concepts,  then,  must 
have  preceded,  logically  and  chronologically,  the  for- 
mation of  the  roots  in  which  they  are  embodied,  and 
must  therefore  have  been  effected  without  the  aid  of 
language,  which  was  subsequently  evolved  or  elaborated 
out  of  these  roots.  What  becomes,  then,  of  the  asser- 
tion that  it  is  impossible  to  think  or  to  generalize  with- 
out language,  since  language  itself  originated  in  a  long 
and  laborious  process  of  thought  and  generalization? 

The  manner  in  which  the  word  "  quack,"  in  the 
case  already  cited,  gradually  acquired  its  widely  differ- 
ent meanings  is  perfectly  intelligible.  Suppose,  now, 
that  the  child,  after  having  grown  to  inanhood,  re- 
tained, as  the  result  of  isolation,  the  use  of  the  word 
"  quack "  in  its  diverse  significations,  and  taught  and 
transmitted  it  to  his  posterity,  so  that  it  became  incor- 
porated in  the  language  of  his  race.  In  a  few  genera- 
tions, especially  among  a  rude  people,  the  origin  of  the 
word  would  be  forgotten,  and  it  would  be  difficult  to 
imagine  how  it  came  to  acquire  such  a  variety  of  mean- 
ings, and  to  stand  for  so  many  objects  having  appar- 
ently no  connection  with  one  another.  In  due  time 
the  philologist  would  come  with  his  apparatus  criticus, 
subject  the  word  to  a  strictly  scientific  analysis,  apply 
all  the  approved  tests,  and,  after  great  expenditure 
of  etymological  erudition  and  conjectural  ingenuity, 
would  discover  half  a  dozen  wholly  independent  roots 


280  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

of  "  quack  "  which  could  not  be  traced  to  one  and  the 
same  source. 

No  one  knows  how  often,  in  the  formative  period 
of  language,  it  may  have  happened  that  the  growth  of  a 
word  and  the  multiplication  of  its  meanings  may  have 
been  obscured  and  rendered  incomprehensible  because 
the  intermediate  stages  of  its  development  were  for- 
gotten, and  the  connecting  links  that  made  the  transi- 
tion easy  and  natural  were  lost.  In  the  instance  just 
cited  we  have  also  an  example  of  a  fruitful  onomato- 
poetic  root.  Indeed,  in  our  own  tongue,  "  quack,"  the 
mere  imitation  of  an  animal  cry,  has  given  rise  to  a 
variety  of  words  and  conceptions,  such  as  quack,  quack- 
salver, quackery,  which  are  as  remote  in  their  relations 
to  the  web-footed  fowl  as  is  the  man  who  "plays  at 
ducks  and  drakes  "  with  his  money,  and  ends  his  career 
as  a  "lame  duck." 

Nothing  could  be  more  abrupt  or  incredible,  to 
take  an  illustration  from  Nature,  than  the  metamor- 
phoses of  the  Lepidoptera,  the  same  individual  under- 
going the  most  marvellous  changes  from  caterpillar 
into  chrysalis,  and  again  into  butterfly.  Here  the  trans- 
formations are  so  great  that,  if  we  saw  merely  the  result, 
we  should  never  suspect  the  nature  of  the  process.  Crea- 
tures that  for  a  long  time  were  supposed  to  be  entirely 
distinct,  and  were  classified  as  belonging  not  only  to 
different  genera,  but  even  to  different  orders  of  animals, 
are  now  known  to  be  the  same  individual  in  different 
phases  or  stages  of  its  development.  Thus,  as  we  are 
told  by  an  eminent  authority  on  Crustacea,  "the  Zoea^ 
the  Megalops,  and  the  Carcinus  Moenas,  or  shore  crab, 
are  but  the  baby,  the  child,  and  the  adult  forms  of  a 
single  individual." 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        281 

The  AmpMcyon  is  an  animal  which  may  have  been 
the  common  ancestor  of  the  dog  and  the  bear,  although 
more  closely  allied  to  the  former  than  to  the  latter. 
The  Ilycenardos,  on  the  contrary,  possesses  more  ursine 
than  canine  characteristics,  but,  by  change  of  environ- 
ment and  under  stress  of  circumstances,  might  have 
branched  off  in  either  direction.  The  Archceopteryx 
LithograpMca  was  a  sort  of  grifhn,  from  which  both 
birds  and  reptiles  may  have  descended.  The  PJiena- 
codus  Primcevus  may  have  been  the  progenitor  of  hoofed 
animals  or  clawed  animals,  and  needed  only  slight  modi- 
fications in  order  to  ramify  into  either  class  of  quadru- 
peds. Examples  of  this  sort  abound  among  fossil  crea-- 
tures. 

What  is  here  shown  to  be  true  of  living  organisms  is 
still  more  probable  of  roots  of  speech;  and  the  natural- 
ist might,  with  at  least  equal  cogency  and  validity,  argue 
analogically  from  the  identity  of  these  so  exceedingly 
diverse  Crustacea,  or  from  the  common  origin  of  man 
and  ape,  that  roots  like  da  and  gar,  however  much  they 
may  differ  in  meaning,  are  really  traceable  to  one  and 
the  same  source. 

"  Show  me  only  one  root  in  the  language  of  ani- 
mals,'*  says  Max  Miiller,  "such  as  ah,  to  be  sharp  and 
quick,  and  from  it  two  derivatives,  as  asva,  the  quick 
one — ^the  horse — and  acutus,  sharp  or  quick-witted; 
nay,  show  me  one  animal  that  has  the  power  of  form- 
ing roots,  that  can  put  one  and  two  together,  and  real- 
ize the  simplest  dual  concept;  show  me  one  animal  that 
can  think  and  say  *two,'  and  I  should  say  that,  so  far 
as  language  is  concerned,  we  can  not  oppose  Mr.  Dar- 
win's argument,  and  that  man  has,  or  at  least  may  have 
been,  developed  from  some  lower  animal." 


282  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Nothing  could  be  more  absurd  than  this  sort  of 
philological  ultimatum,  since,  according  to  the  theory 
of  evolution,  the  language  of  animals  has  not  yet  reached 
this  stage  of  development;  for  it  would  then  become 
articulate  speech,  and  be  no  longer  the  language  of  ani- 
mals, but  the  language  of  man.  But  this  is  surely  no 
evidence  or  indication  that  one  may  not  grow  out  of 
the  other;  on  the  contrary,  it  rather  suggests  the  possi- 
bility of  such  growth  and  development. 

We  can  not  be  certain,  however,  that  animals  may 
not  have  general  concepts.  When  a  dog,  in  eager  pur- 
suit of  some  object,  yelps  aTc-ah,  how  do  we  know  that 
this  sharp  utterance,  which  expresses  the  strong  and 
impatient  desire  of  the  dog  to  overtake  the  object,  may 
not  stand  in  the  canine  mind  for  the  general  concept 
of  quickness?  It  is  used  in  pursuing  all  animals  and 
inanimate  things,  bird,  hare,  squirrel,  stick,  or  stone, 
and  cannot  therefore  denote  any  single  one  of  them, 
but  must  have  a  general  signification.  For  aught  we 
know,  the  language  of  animals  may  be  made  up  of  un- 
developed roots  vaguely  expressive  of  general  concepts, 
or  may  even  contain  derivative  sounds.  The  bark  of  a 
dog  after  bringing  a  stick  or  a  stone  to  its  master  and 
requesting  him  to  throw  it  again  is  slightly  different 
from  the  sharp  yelp  uttered  in  pursuing  it;  and  it  is 
impossible  to  know  whether  these  sounds  may  not  stand 
to  each  other  in  the  relation  of  the  radical  to  its  de- 
rivative. 

Darwin  asserts  that  "  the  dog,  since  being  domesti- 
cated, has  learned  to  bark  in  at  least  five  or  six  distinct 
tones,  namely:  the  bark  of  eagerness,  as  in  the  chase; 
that  of  anger,  as  well  as  growling;  the  yelp,  or  howl  of 
despair,  when  shut  up;  the  baying  at  night;  the  bark 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        283 

of  303^,  when  starting  on  a  walk  with  his  master;  and 
the  very  distinct  one  of  demand  or  supplication,  as  when 
wishing  for  a  door  or  window  to  be  opened."  This 
variety  of  tones,  expressing  different  desires  and  emo- 
tions in  an  animal  that  in  its  wild  state  could  not  bark 
at  all,  marks  a  very  considerable  advance  in  the  power 
of  vocal  utterance  as  the  result  of  association  with 
man. 

Max  Miiller  has  recently  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
roots  originated  in  cries  uttered  by  men  in  performing 
certain  actions,  such  as  digging,  cutting,  lifting,  or 
pounding.  This  so-called  clamor  concomitans,  or  sound 
attending  the  action,  became  by  association  a  clamor  sig- 
nificans,  or  sound  signifying  the  action.  This  explana- 
tion of  the  genesis  of  roots  is  doubtless,  to  a  certain 
extent,  correct,  but  comes  perilously  near  to  the  "  bow- 
wow "  and  "  pooh-pooh "  theories  which  he  formerly 
rejected  with  ridicule  and  ineffable  scorn.  It  would  be 
hard,  however,  to  find  a  finer  combination  of  concomi- 
tant and  significant  clamour  than  the  deep  bay  of  a 
pack  of  hounds. 

In  one  of  his  lectures  Muller  quotes,  as  '^  an  excel- 
lent answer  to  the  interjectional  theory,"  the  following 
observations  of  Home  Tooke  in  the  Diversions  of  Pur- 
ley:  "  The  dominion  of  speech  is  erected  upon  the 
downfall  of  interjections.  Without  the  artful  contriv- 
ance of  language,  mankind  would  have  had  nothing 
but  interjections  with  which  to  communicate  orally  any 
of  their  feelings.  The  neighing  of  a  horse,  the  lowing 
of  a  cow,  the  barking  of  a  dog,  the  purring  of  a  cat, 
sneezing,  coughing,  groaning,  shrieking,  and  every  other 
involuntary  convulsion  with  oral  sound  have  almost  as 

good  a  title  to  be  called  parts  of  speech  as  interjections 
19 


284  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

have.  Voluntary  interjections  are  employed  only  when 
the  suddenness  and  vehemence  of  some  affection  or  pas- 
sion return  men  to  their  natural  state,  and  make  them 
for  a  moment  forget  the  use  of  speech;  or  when,  from 
some  circumstance,  the  shortness  of  time  will  not  per- 
mit them  to  exercise  it." 

This  passage  really  confirms  in  the  strongest  manner 
the  theory  which  it  is  cited  in  order  to  refute.  The 
dominion  of  every  improved  implement  is  founded  upon 
the  downfall  of  an  inferior  implement.  Thus  the  steel 
plough  has  superseded  the  pointed  piece  of  wood  with 
which  the  primitive  husbandman  scratched  the  surface 
of  the  earth;  the  matchlock  has  supplanted  the  cross- 
bow, the  Eemington  rifle  the  rude  musket,  and  the 
steam  car  the  old  stagecoach.  Everywhere  in  the  prog- 
ress of  human  invention  the  better  instrument  takes 
the  place  of  the  poorer  one  and  robs  it  of  its  supremacy. 
The  evolution  of  language  furnishes  no  exception  to  this 
universal  law.  It  is  a  means  of  communicating  ideas 
and  emotions  from  one  person  to  another,  and  the  more 
clearly,  concisely,  and  forcibly  it  performs  this  function 
the  more  perfect  it  is  as  an  instrument.  To  speak  of 
the  grammatically  complicated,  and  therefore  practi- 
cally clumsy,  Sanskrit  as  superior  to  the  simple  and 
handy  English,  and  to  characterize  the  latter  as  the  re- 
sult of  degeneration  and  decay,  is  an  abuse  of  terms 
involving  an  utter  misconception  of  the  purpose  for 
which  language  exists.  Sanskrit  may  be  more  interest- 
ing philologically  than  English,  just  as  the  five-toed 
EoMppus  and  the  three-toed  Hipparion  may  be  more 
interesting  anatomically  than  the  horse;  but  no  one 
would  deny  that  the  modern  quadruped  combines  in  a 
greater  degree  simplicity  of  structure  with  efiiciency 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        285 

of  function,  and  is  therefore,  as  an  animal,  superior 
to  its  ancient  prototypes. 

The  very  fact  that,  as  Home  Tooke  observes,  men 
return  to  their  natural  state  in  the  use  of  interjections 
and  exclamations  well-nigh  proves  that  these  are  the 
raw  material,  or  linguistic  protoplasm,  out  of  which 
articulate  or  organic  speech  was  evolved.  But  to  com- 
pare a  cough  and  a  sneeze  to  an  interjection,  or  to  put 
them  in  the  same  category  with  the  neigh  of  a  horse, 
the  bark  of  a  dog,  or  the  purr  of  a  cat,  shows  a  strange 
lack  of  discrimination  between  purely  physical  and  in- 
voluntary convulsions  and  vocal  sounds  intended  to 
express  emotions  of  the  mind.  A  cough  or  a  sneeze  may 
be  more  or  less  successfully  imitated,  like  a  stage  laugh, 
and  thus  become  the  sign  and  suggestion  of  an  idea;  but 
a  genuine  cough  or  sneeze  is  a  violent  expulsion  of  the 
air  through  the  throat  or  nose  in  consequence  of  local 
irritation  beyond  a  man's  control,  and  has,  therefore, 
no  oral  or  intellectual  element  in  it. 

As  regards  the  ability  of  animals  to  "  think  and  say 
*  two,' "  it  has  been  proved  conclusively  that  the  mag- 
pie and  some  other  birds,  even  in  their  wild  state,  can 
count  at  least  four,  and  this  fact  is  recognised  and  util- 
ized by  fowlers;  but  if  it  be  true  that  it  is  impossible  to 
form  the  concept  "  four  "  without  the  aid  of  language, 
it  follows  that  the  magpie  must  be  able  to  say  "  four  " 
in  a  language  of  its  own.  To  deny  this  conclusion  be- 
cause we  do  not  understand  "margot"  (as  the  magpie 
language  might  be  called)  would  be  to  set  up  our  own 
ignorance  as  a  standard  by  which  to  test  the  magpie's 
intellectual  capacity,  and  thus  fall  into  the  fallacy  of 
argumentum  ab  ignorantia  facti.  This  knowledge  of 
numeration  can  be  greatly  extended  by  instruction.    A 


286  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

chimpanzee  in  the  London  Zoological  Gardens,  says 
Mr.  Eomanes,  has  been  taught  to  count  five.  Ask  her 
for  four,  three,  two,  or  five  straws  in  any  order  of  suc- 
cession, and  she  will  give  the  exact  number  required. 
She  understands  not  only  the  names  of  these  numerals, 
but  also  other  words  and  phrases,  just  as  a  child  does 
before  learning  to  speak. 

All  classification  rests  upon  the  power  of  generaliza- 
tion, and  this  faculty  belongs  to  the  lower  animals  as 
well  as  to  men.  As  has  been  remarked  by  an  acute  ob- 
server: "Dogs  can  distinguish  strangers  and  acquaint- 
ances, well-dressed  persons  from  persons  in  rags,  the 
canine  species  from  all  other  species.  They  can  not 
carry  their  classification  far,  not  from  want  of  memory 
and  intelligence,  but  from  want  of  a  well-defined  lan- 
guage and  printed  books."  The  dullest  dog  has  a  lively 
perception  of  the  difference  between  canine  and  feline. 
jSTo  matter  how  much  the  particular  dog  may  vary  from 
other  individuals  of  the  species. 

As  hounds  and  greyhounds,  mongrels,  spaniels,  curs, 
Shoughs,  water-rugs,  and  demi-wolves, 

he  is  never  confounded  with  the  cat,  but  is  at  once 
recognised  as  canine.  The  dog  not  only  thinks  of  these 
so  diverse  creatures  as  belonging  to  the  same  class,  but 
is  also  conscious  of  belonging  to  it  himself.  Man's  in- 
tellectual superiority  consists  in  possessing  a  greater 
number  of  these  concepts,  and  in  being  able  to  compare 
and  combine  them  in  reasoning  processes  with  greater 
accuracy  and  facility,  than  the  beast,  although  there 
are  tribes  of  men  in  which  this  superiority  is  so  slight 
as  to  be  scarcely  perceptible. 

Thus,  for  example,  the  aborigines  of  Australia  have 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        28Y 

no  words  for  the  expression  of  abstract  ideas  or  general 
conceptions,  not  even  collective  names  for  animals  and 
plants,  indicating  a  lack  of  the  faculty  of  generalization. 
Their  ability  to  discriminate  between  animals  of  the 
same  species  is  far  greater  than  the  poverty  of  their 
vocabulary  would  imply.  They  do  not  mistake  a  wild 
duck  for  a  wild  goose,  and  yet  they  call  them  both 
^^  monarumJ"  Every  poisonous  serpent  is  a  ^^wonge" 
and  every  kind  of  turtle  a  '^ miaro."  "White  is  "lam- 
bar  "  and  black  is  "  ngurue/'  but  red,  green,  blue,  and 
yellow  are  lumped  together  as  "  ieiar  "  ;  but  it  would 
be  incorrect  to  infer  from  this  want  of  special  designa- 
tions that  they  do  not  distinguish  between  these  four 
colours  with  the  eye.  The  development  of  language 
has  not  kept  pace  with  the  cultivation  of  the  organs  of 
sense.  Some  Australian  tribes  can  count  only  three, 
and  none  of  them  more  than  five;  "  garro  "  is  one,  "  loo  " 
two,  ^^Jcoromde"  three,  "wogaro"  four,  and  "hod 
Icoromde  "  five;  more  than  five  is  "  meian;''  many.  Even 
the  natives  who  have  learned  a  little  English  are  not 
able  to  count  beyond  six  with  any  degree  of  certainty, 
although  they  make  use  of  the  English  numerals.* 

Exclamations,  according  to  Max  Muller,  "are  as 
little  to  be  called  words  as  the  expressive  gestures  which 
usually  accompany  these  exclamations."  No  one  asserts 
that  they  are  words  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term;  all 
that  is  claimed  for  them  is  that  they  express  thoughts 
and  feelings  or  reveal  states  of  the  mind,  and  may  be 
regarded  as  language.  This  he  admits  when  he  adds, 
"In   fact,   interjections,    together   with   gestures,    the 


*  Iin  australischen  Busch,  von  Richard  Semon,  Leipzig,  1896, 
p.  240. 


288  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

movements  of  the  muscles  of  the  mouth  and  the  eye, 
would  be  quite  sufficient  for  all  purposes  which  lan- 
guage answers  with  the  majority  of  mankind.'^  But 
as  such  exclamations  and  gesticulations  are  not  words 
and  do  not  constitute  language,  the  majority  of  man- 
kind are  destitute  of  thought,  since  we  are  assured  that 
"  language  and  thought  are  inseparable/'  and  that 
"there  is  no  thought  without  words,  as  little  as  there 
are  words  without  thought." 

Prof.  Mansel  is  nearer  the  truth  when  he  says,  "  As 
a  matter  of  necessity,  men  must  think  by  symbols;  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  they  do  think  by  language."  But  al- 
though words  are  the  most  convenient  and  most  perfect 
symbols  of  thought,  they  are  by  no  means  the  only  ones. 
A  man  can  count  three  by  holding  up  three  fingers,  or 
by  touching  three  objects,  or  by  laying  down  three 
sticks,  as  the  Veddahs  do  in  bartering,  without  the  aid 
of  articulate  speech.  A  dog  can  do  the  same  by  barking 
three  times.  It  is  not  true  that  "  language  begins  where 
interjections  end."  Articulate  speech  begins  where 
pantomimic  expression,  emphasized  by  mere  hooting 
and  hallooing,  ends;  but  both  are  instruments  of 
thought  and  symbols  for  the  representation  and  com- 
munication of  ideas. 

"  Speech,"  as  Prof.  Whitney  has  justly  observed, 
"is  not  a  personal  possession,  but  a  social  institution. 
"What  we  may  severally  choose  to  say  is  not  language 
until  it  is  accepted  and  employed  by  our  fellows.  The 
whole  development  of  speech  is  wrought  out  by  the 
community.  That  is  a  word,  and  only  that,  which  is 
understood  in  a  community.  Their  mutual  understand- 
ing is  the  tie  that  connects  it  with  the  idea.  It  is  a 
sign  which  each  one  has  acquired  from  without,  from 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        289 

the  usage  of  others."    Goethe,  in  his  epigram  Etymolo- 
gie,  expresses  the  same  thought: 

So  wird  erst  nach  und  nach  die  Sprache  festgerammelt, 
Und  was  ein  Volk  zusammen  sich  gestammelt, 
Muss  ewiges  Gesetz  fftr  Herz  und  Seele  sein. 

"  Man/'  says  Wilhelm  von  Humholdt,  "  understands 
himself  fully  only  by  testing  the  intelligibility  of  his 
words  on  others.  The  objectivity  is  increased  when  the 
word  which  he  has  formed  is  echoed  back  to  him  from 
the  mouth  of  another.  At  the  same  time,  it  is  not  there- 
by robbed  in  the  least  of  its  subjective  character,  since 
man  feels  himself  always  one  with  man."  What  is  felt 
and  expressed  by  the  individual  must  be  refelt  and  re- 
expressed  by  the  mass  and  stamped  with  its  indorse- 
ment before  it  is  accepted  as  speech. 

One  who  is  deaf  and  dumb  from  his  birth  learns  to 
give  digital  instead  of  lingual  expression  to  his  thoughts, 
and  it  has  been  observed  that  such  a  pcson  in  the  act 
of  thinking  almost  unconsciously  moves  his  fingers,  as 
though  thought  and  digital  action  (as  a  substitute  for 
articulation)  were  necessarily  and  inseparably  connect- 
ed, thus  proving  that,  while  speech  is  a  natural  instru- 
ment for  the  expression  of  thought,  other  purely  con- 
ventional methods  may  be  substituted  for  it,  and 
through  habit  may  become  quite  as  strongly  associated 
with  the  thinking  processes. 

Among  savage  tribes,  and  even  among  a  people  so 
highly  civilized  as  the  Arabs,  signs  and  gestures  play 
a  very  important  part  in  the  expression  of  thought,  and 
the  Neapolitan's  love  of  pantomime  and  skill  in  the  use 
of  it  are  well  known.  Of  the  Veddahs  of  Ceylon  Sir 
James  Emerson  Tennent  says,  "  So  degraded  are  some 


290  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

of  these  wretched  outcasts  that  it  has  appeared  doubt- 
ful in  certain  cases  whether  they  have  any  language 
whatever  ";  and  Mr.  G.  E.  Mercer,  who,  by  a  long  resi- 
dence in  their  country,  acquired  an  intimate  knowledge 
of  their  habits,  affirms  that  "  even  their  communica- 
tions with  one  another  are  made  by  signs,  grimaces, 
and  guttural  sounds  which  bear  little  or  no  resemblance 
to  distinct  words  or  systematized  language."  It  is  not 
correct,  from  an  anthropological  point  of  view,  to  char- 
acterize the  Veddahs  as  "  degraded."  They  are  simply 
primitive  and  undeveloped.  They  are  the  remains  of 
the  aborigines  of  Ceylon;  and  the  few  articulate  words 
they  utter  they  have  learned,  parrotlike,  from  the  Sin- 
ghalese, who  invaded  and  conquered  the  country,  and 
now  constitute  its  chief  population. 

Lord  Monboddo's  seemingly  absurd  and  much-ridi- 
culed theory  that  language  was  formed  by  an  assembly 
of  learned  men  convened  for  that  purpose  is  right  so  far 
as  it  affirms  the  conventional  and  communal  character 
of  articulate  speech  and  written  language;  and  this  is 
doubtless  all  that  the  laird  meant  to  imply  by  his  rather 
bullish  statement.  He  did  not  intend  to  assert  that  lan- 
guage was  framed,  like  a  political  platform,  by  a  body 
of  men  come  together  expressly  for  that  object,  but 
that  it  was  gradually  developed  in  consequence  of  their 
coming  together  as  individuals,  families,  and  communi- 
ties, and  endeavouring  to  understand  one  another  by 
means  of  gestures  and  exclamations  and  onomatopoetic 
sounds.  It  was  also  the  most  intelligent  men  of  their 
time;  those  who  were  endowed  with  the  greatest  amount 
of  wisdom,  the  quickest  wits,  and  the  readiest  faculty  of 
invention;  in  short,  the  foremost  men  of  primitive  life, 
who  contributed  most  to  this  result.     Then,  as  now. 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        291 

the  progress  of  the  race  was  due  to  the  impetus  imparted 
to  it  by  the  best  brains,  and  was  less  the  effect  of  happy 
chance  than  we  are  fain  to  imagine. 

Articulate  speech  is  an  immense  help  to  the  intel- 
lectual processes  of  induction  and  deduction,  abstrac- 
tion and  generalization,  but  by  no  means  essential  to 
these  mental  operations.  As  Dr.  Paul  Carus  observes, 
"  The  act  of  naming  is  an  enormous  economy  of  mental 
activity  ";  but  it  is  not  absolutely  necessary  to  this  kind 
of  activity. 

The  fox  must  have  an  abstract  idea  of  danger  apart 
from  any  concrete  form  or  embodiment  of  it;  other- 
wise he  would  not  be  constantly  on  the  alert,  anticipat- 
ing peril  when  it  is  not  present.  Flourens  asserts,  "  It 
is  a  fact  that  beasts  do  not  form  general  ideas,  and  it 
is  another  fact  that  man  does  form  them";  he  then 
adds:  "  The  study  of  mind  by  mind  is  that  which  puts 
the  final  stamp  upon  the  profound  differeice  separating 
beast  from  man.  Intelligence  in  beasts  does  not  study 
intelligence."  Buffon  caps  the  climax  of  this  sort  of 
dogmatism  by  declaring  that  in  animals  "  c'est  le  corps 
qui  parle  au  corps."  A  body  talking  to  another  body 
without  the  mediation  of  mental  faculties  would  be  a 
phenomenon  worth  seeing. 

Pantomime  is  the  natural  language  of  man  and  the 
lower  animals,  and  is  intelligible  without  previous  study. 
In  this  respect  it  differs  from  articulate  speech,  which 
is  mainly  conventional  in  its  character.  A  word  has 
the  meaning  which  common  consent  has  tacitly  attrib- 
uted to  it,  and  which  usage  has  sanctioned.  It  is  not 
necessary,  however,  that  any  two  persons  should  agree 
beforehand  as  to  the  signification  of  mimetic  movements 
in  order  to  be  able  to  communicate  their  ideas  in  this 


292  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

manner.  Two  deaf-mutes,  or  savages  of  alien  tribes, 
on  meeting  for  the  first  time,  have  no  definite  stock 
of  signs  with  which  to  converse,  but  create  them  as 
they  go  along.  If  one  sign  fails  to  express  the 
thought  clearly,  they  try  another.  If  A  wishes  to 
convey  to  C  the  drift  of  a  previous  conversation 
with  B,  he  will  do  so  by  means  of  signs  many  of  which 
differ  from  those  used  in  conversing  with  B.  He 
will  constantly  invent  new  and  more  expressive  signs, 
and  thereby  convey  his  meaning  more  fully  and 
distinctly  than  in  his  first  conversation.  This  natural 
sign  language  may  be  enlarged  and  perfected,  as  it  is 
in  institutes  for  deaf-mutes,  by  the  introduction  of  con- 
ventional elements,  and  thus  an  extended  mimetic  sys- 
tem for  the  communication  of  thought  may  be  devel- 
oped. 

The  dog  expresses  thoughts  and  emotions  by  wag- 
ging his  tail,  to  quite  as  good  purpose  as  many  persons 
do  by  wagging  their  tongues.  We  impart  our  wishes 
to  animals  almost  exclusively  by  gestures,  until  they 
learn  to  understand  our  words,  w^hich  then  alone  suf- 
fice, so  that  the  pantomime  is  no  longer  necessary  except 
for  sake  of  emphasis  in  case  they  refuse  to  obey.  Ani- 
mals also,  in  communicating  their  desires  to  us,  make 
use  of  signs  accompanied  by  all  sorts  of  vocal  utter- 
ances, which  through  association  have  become  intelli- 
gible. 

Among  insects,  especially  ants  and  bees,  the  lan- 
guage of  gesture  is  highly  developed.  Owing  to  the 
smallness  of  these  creatures,  it  is  difficult  to  observe 
them  in  their  conversational  intercourse,  and  their  re- 
moteness from  us  in  structure  and  organization  renders 
it  still  more  difficult  for  us  to  identify  ourselves  with 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        293 

them  through  sympathy,  and  to  get  a  clear  conception 
of  their  states  of  mind.  We  are  fully  justified,  how- 
ever, in  inferring  from  their  conduct  that  they  com- 
municate their  ideas  to  one  another  with  rapidity,  pre- 
cision, and  intelligibleness.  "If  psychologists  of  to- 
day,^' remarks  Prof.  Wundt,  "  overlooking  all  that  an 
animal  can  express  through  gestures  and  sounds,  limit 
the  possession  of  language  to  mankind,  such  a  con- 
clusion is  scarcely  less  absurd  than  that  of  many  philoso- 
phers of  antiquity  who  regarded  the  languages  of  bar- 
barous nations  as  animal  cries." 

This  observation  is  perfectly  true,  but  not  new,  in- 
asmuch as  it  was  made  more  than  fourteen  centuries 
ago  by  the  Neoplatonist  Porphyrins  in  his  treatise  on 
abstinence  from  animal  food  (Trept  dTrox??  ^fuj/vxoyv). 
After  stating  that  the  different  tones  used  by  animals 
show  that  they  have  a  language  for  the  expression  of 
different  sentiments,  such  as  anger,  fear,  and  affection, 
he  adds:  "  To  deny  animals  language  because  it  is  unin- 
telligible to  us  would  be  as  absurd  as  for  the  crows  to 
maintain  that  their  croaking  is  the  only  rational  speech, 
and  that  we  are  devoid  of  reason  because  we  do  not 
understand  it;  or  for  the  inhabitants  of  Attica  to  claim 
that  theirs  is  the  only  language,  and  that  all  who  do 
not  speak  it  are  devoid  of  reason.  Nevertheless,  an  in- 
habitant of  Attica  could  as  easily  understand  the  lan- 
guage of  crows  as  those  of  Persians  and  Syrians."  For- 
eign tongues,  to  those  who  hear  them  for  the  first  time, 
are  hardly  more  intelligible  than  the  inarticulate  sounds 
uttered  by  animals.  The  Emperor  Julian  compared  the 
speech  of  the  Germans  to  the  caw  of  ravens,  and  to  the 
Athenians  the  conversation  of  Thracians  and  Scythians 
sounded  like  the  chatter  of  cranes. 


294  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Prof.  Jaeger's  assertion  that  animals  have  merely 
emotional  language  (Gefuhlssprache)  in  distinction  from 
the  language  of  thought  (Gedankensprache)  is  psycho- 
logically untenable.  In  all  operations  of  the  mind, 
thoughts  and  feelings  are  inextricably  interblended, 
and  it  is  impossible  to  draw  a  line  of  demarcation  be- 
tween them.  There  is  no  language  of  emotion  as  op- 
posed to  or  essentially  distinct  from  language  of 
thought.  Emotion  is  only  thought  under  tension, 
thought  strongly  emphasized  and  impelled  by  desire. 
Every  cry  or  exclamation  presupposes  an  idea  or  intel- 
lectual conception,  without  which  the  emotion  would 
never  arise;  and  it  is  hardly  possible  to  determine  where 
the  one  begins  and  the  other  ends. 

To  what  an  extent  animals  are  at  the  mercy  of  meta- 
physicians is  illustrated  by  the  following  passage  from 
a  treatise  by  Prof.  Green :  "  There  is  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose, because  the  burnt  dog  shuns  the  fire,  that  it  per- 
ceives any  relation  between  it  and  the  pain  of  being 
burnt.  .  .  .  The  dog's  conduct  may  be  accounted  for 
by  the  simple  sequence  of  an  imagination  upon  a  visual 
sensation,  resembling  ones  which  actual  pain  has  pre- 
viously followed.  .  .  .  Till  dogs  can  talk,  what  data 
have  we  on  which  to  found  another  explanation?  "  We 
have  precisely  the  same  data  in  the  case  of  the  burnt 
dog  as  in  the  case  of  the  burnt  child  who  shuns  the  fire; 
and  we  are  justified  in  reasoning  from  analogy  that 
the  conduct  of  the  dog  is  due  to  the  same  perception 
of  cause  and  effect  as  that  of  the  child.  "  The  simple 
sequence  of  an  imagination  upon  a  visual  sensation, 
resembling  ones  which  actual  pain  has  previously  fol- 
lowed," means,  when  translated  from  metaphysical 
jargon  into  plain  English,  that,  when  a  dog  sees  a  flame. 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        295 

its  resemblance  to  another  flame  which  burned  him 
leads  him  to  avoid  it,  lest  this  one  should  also  burn 
him.  The  misfortune  of  dogs  in  not  being  endowed 
with  articulate  speech  is  greatly  aggravated  if  it  renders 
them  liable  to  have  such  elaborate  philosophy  as  this 
mouthed  over  them. 

The  phenomenon  of  aphasia  furnishes  additional 
evidence  that  the  faculty  of  speech  is  not  essential  to 
the  exercise  of  thought  or  to  the  power  of  reasoning. 
Aphasia,  or  speechlessness,  as  has  been  shown  by  Bouil- 
land,  Broca,  and  other  pathologists,  is  the  result  of  a 
disease  or  lesion  of  the  third  frontal  convolution  of  the 
left  hemisphere  of  the  brain.  Any  injury  of  this  part 
produces  a  partial  or  complete  loss  of  articulate  speech 
without  disturbing  or  diminishing  in  the  least  the 
action  of  the  intellectual  faculties.  The  vocal  organs 
and  all  the  mechanism  of  articulation  remain  intact, 
and  the  ability  to  think  logically  and  cmsecutively  is 
unimpaired.  There  is  no  paralysis  of  the  muscular  ap- 
paratus necessary  to  the  enunciation  of  words,  and  no 
derangement  of  the  mental  operations  so  far  as  the  for- 
mation and  orderly  sequence  of  conceptions  are  con- 
cerned; only  the  power  of  (Correct  verbal  expression  is 
gone.  Max  Miiller  speaks  with  contempt  of  "a  fold 
of  the  brain '';  but  here  we  have  an  instance  in  which 
articulate  speech  is  dependent  upon  the  full  develop- 
ment and  the  healthy  action  of  a  mere  fold  of  the  brain, 
which,  if  his  own  theory  be  true,  is  the  Eubicon  sepa- 
rating man  from  the  brute. 

The  aphasiac  can  express  his  thoughts  and  feelings 
by  facial  movements,  gesticulations,  and  guttural  noises, 
but  is  unable  to  articulate  words  correctly.  He  thus 
reverts  to  the  condition  of  mankind  prior  to  the  develop- 


296  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

ment  of  the  speech-producing  cerebral  convolution  plus 
the  knowledge  and  mental  capacity  acquired  since  that 
time.  Finkelnburg  reports  the  extreme  case  of  a  woman 
whose  memory  for  things  and  persons  was  normal,  and 
in  whose  general  conduct  nothing  anomalous  was  ob- 
servable, but  who  had  lost  entirely  the  use  of  speech, 
and  could  understand  neither  spoken  nor  written  words. 
She  was  a  pious  Catholic,  but  never  made  the  sign  of 
the  cross  of  her  own  accord  or  when  told  to  do  so,  yet 
readily  imitated  others  when  she  saw  them  do  it.  She 
was  in  the  hospital  three  months,  but  never  learned 
that  the  ringing  of  the  bell  was  the  signal  for  dinner. 
Symbols  even  of  the  most  general  character  had  for  her 
no  significance;  her  understanding  was  confined  strictly 
and  directly  to  things,  and  her  consciousness  seems  to 
have  sunk  to  the  level  of  a  rather  dull  anthropoid. 

In  apes,  cretins,  and  many  microcephalous  persons, 
the  convolution  of  the  brain  on  which  the  power  of 
articulate  speech  depends  is  rudimentary.  Human  and 
simian  brains  are  constructed  on  precisely  the  same  plan, 
and  differ  only  in  the  development  and  consequent  ar- 
rangement of  the  convolutions.  ^^  In  man,"  says  Prof. 
Vogt,  "  the  third  frontal  convolution  is  extraordinarily 
developed  and  covers  the  insula,  while  the  transverse 
central  convolutions  are  much  less  prominent;  in  the 
ape,  on  the  contrary,  the  third  frontal  convolution  is 
but  slightly  developed,  while  the  central  transverse  con- 
volutions are  very  large,  descending  quite  to  the  edge 
of  the  hemisphere  and  giving  to  the  fissure  of  Sylvius 
the  form  of  a  V." 

The  difference  is  one  of  degree,  and  not  of  kind, 
resulting  from  the  higher  evolution  of  the  same  type. 
Max  Miiller  admits  it  to  be  possible  and  intelligible  that 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        297 

"that  most  wonderful  of  organs,  the  eye,  has  been  de- 
veloped out  of  a  pigmentary  spot,  and  the  ear  out  of 
a  particularly  sore  place  in  the  skin — that,  in  fact,  an 
animal  without  any  organs  of  sense  may  in  time  grow 
into  an  animal  with  organs  of  sense  ";  but  "  by  no  effort 
of  the  understanding,  by  no  stretch  of  imagination,'' 
he  declares,  "  can  I  explain  to  myself  how  language 
could  have  grown  out  of  anything  which  animals  pos- 
sess, even  if  we  granted  them  millions  of  years  for  that 
purpose."  In  other  words,  he  can  imagine  how  a  sore 
spot  in  the  skin  could  grow  into  a  complex  and  delicate 
organ  like  the  ear,  or  a  sensitive  black  spot  could  de- 
velop into  the  marvellous  mechanism  of  the  eye,  but  by 
no  mental  effort  can  he  conceive  how  an  imperfectly 
developed  convolution  in  the  brain  of  an  ape  could 
become  a  perfectly  developed  convolution  in  the  brain 
of  a  man.  Surely  this  is  one  of  the  strangest  freaks  of 
the  imagination  on  record.  Yet  he  admits  the  correct- 
ness of  Dr.  Br  oca's  conclusions  on  this  subject.  "  So 
much,"  he  says,  "seems  to  be  established:  if  a  certain 
portion  of  the  brain  on  the  left  side  of  the  anterior  lobe 
happens  to  be  affected  by  disease,  the  patient  becomes 
unable  to  use  rational  language;  while,  unless  some 
other  mental  disease  is  added  to  aphasia,  he  retains  the 
faculty  of  emotional  language,  and  of  communicating 
with  others  by  means  of  signs  and  gestures."  This  state- 
ment is  not  exact.  Aphasia  is  not  the  loss  of  rational 
language,  but  of  articulate  speech,  which  is  something 
quite  different.  The  aphasiac  can  exercise  his  reasoning 
powers  and  can  entertain  and  express  by  pantomime 
rational  ideas,  but  he  is  unable  to  utter  or  embody  them 
in  either  oral  or  written  words,  although  he  may  under- 
stand them  when  addressed  to  his  ear  or  eye. 


298  ANIMAL  PYSCHOLOGY. 

Sometimes  there  is  not  an  entire  cessation,  but  a 
curious  and  comical  perversion  of  speech  in  the  pa- 
tients, who  use  words  having  no  connection  with  the 
ideas  they  wish  to  convey,  and  are  often,  though  not 
always,  unconscious  of  any  discrepancy  or  impropriety 
in  their  language.  Thus  Trousseau  narrates  the  case 
of  a  lady  who,  on  receiving  a  call,  met  her  visitor  with 
a  kindly  smile,  and,  pointing  to  a  chair,  exclaimed, 
"Pig,  brute,  stupid  fool!"  "Madame  begs  you  to  be 
seated,'^  said  a  friend  who  was  present,  and  thus  inter- 
preted the  courtesy  really  intended  by  the  rude  greet- 
ing. The  lady^s  conduct  was  otherwise  sensible,  and 
her  process  of  thought  logical  and  rational,  although 
her  utterances  were  wholly  irrelevant,  and  usually  most 
coarse  when  meant  to  be  most  charming. 

Another  striking  case,  recorded  by  Trousseau  and 
cited  by  Bateman,  is  that  of  Prof.  Eostan,  who,  while 
occupied  in  reading  one  of  Lamartine's  literary  con- 
versations, began  to  be  aware  that  he  only  partially 
comprehended  the  sense  of  the  text.  He  stopped  for  a 
moment,  then  resumed  his  reading,  and  again  experi- 
enced the  same  difficulty.  He  became  alarmed,  and 
wished  to  call  for  assistance,  when,  to  his  surprise,  he 
found  himself  unable  to  speak  a  word.  It  now  occurred 
to  him  that  he  might  have  had  a  stroke  of  apoplexy, 
but  he  could  move  all  his  limbs  and  could  discover  no 
evidences  of  paralysis.  He  rang  the  bell,  but  when  the 
servant  appeared  he  could  not  tell  what  he  wanted. 
He  could  move  his  tongue  in  all  directions,  and  seemed 
to  have  full  control  of  his  vocal  organs,  but  could  not 
express  a  thought  by  speech.  He  made  a  sign  that  he 
wished  to  write,  but  when  pen  and  ink  and  paper  were 
brought,  although  he  had  the  perfect  use  of  his  hand, 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        299 

he  could  not  express  a  thought  by  writing.  After  the 
lapse  of  two  or  three  hours  a  physician  came,  and  Eos- 
tan,  turning  up  his  sleeve  and  pointing  to  his  arm, 
thereby  manifested  the  desire  to  be  bled.  No  sooner 
was  this  done,  and  the  local  pressure  on  the  brain  re- 
lieved, than  he  was  able  to  utter  a  few  words,  and  after 
twelve  hours  was  completely  restored  and  could  speak 
as  well  as  ever. 

An  orang-outang  that  had  once  been  bled  on  ac- 
count of  illness,  not  feeling  well  some  time  afterward, 
went  from  one  person  to  another,  and,  pointing  to  the 
vein  in  his  arm,  signified  plainly  enough  that  he  wished 
the  operation  to  be  repeated.  In  this  instance,  the 
orang,  not  being  endowed  with  articulate  speech  owing 
to  the  rudimentary  condition  of  a  convolution  of  the 
brain,  expressed  his  ideas  just  as  the  Frenchman  did, 
who  had  been  temporarily  deprived  of  the  faculty  of 
articulate  speech  owing  to  the  suspension  of  function 
in  the  same  convolution  of  the  brain.  The  process  of 
reasoning  was  identical  in  both  cases.  The  idea  of  re- 
covery from  sickness  was  associated  with  the  act  of 
venesection  as  the  result  of  experience.  In  short,  the 
man  reverted  for  the  time  being  to  the  condition  of  the 
monkey.  How  then  should  it  be  deemed  a  thing  im- 
possible for  him  to  have  risen  out  of  such  a  condition? 

It  is  also  interesting  to  note  that  an  injury  to  the 
brain  of  the  lower  animals  sometimes  produces  phe- 
nomena analogous  to  those  of  aphasia  in  man;  causing 
birds,  for  example,  to  sing  their  notes  wrong,  reversing 
the  intonation  and  accent,  like  the  quail  mentioned  by 
Dr.  Abbott,  which,  owing  to  such  an  accident,  per- 
sistently whistled  "  white-bob  "  instead  of  "  bob-white." 

It  would  be  superfluous  to  multiply  instances  of  the 
20 


300  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

capability  of  understanding  articulate  speech  mani- 
fested by  monkeys,  horses,  dogs,  cats,  elephants,  birds, 
and  other  animals  which  acquire  this  power,  as  children 
do,  through  the  ear  and  by  the  exercise  of  attention. 
They  also  show  a  nice  discrimination  in  distinguishing 
between  words  similar  in  sound.  A  parrot  or  a  raven 
masters  a  new  sentence  by  repeating  it,  and  working 
at  it,  just  as  a  schoolboy  solves  a  hard  problem.  These 
birds  associate  sounds  with  objects,  and  thus  invent 
names  for  them.  Every  dog  is  a  "  bow-wow,"  and  every 
cat  a  "miau-miau."  The  denotative  term  has  an  ono- 
matopoetic  origin,  and  by  the  process  of  generalization 
is  applied  to  all  animals  of  the  species;  it  is  not  neces- 
sary that  the  parrot  should  have  heard  each  individual 
dog  bark  or  cat  mew  before  giving  it  its  appropriate 
name.  A  raven  belonging  to  Gotthard  Heidegger,  a 
clergyman  and  rector  of  the  gymnasium  in  Zurich,  was 
constantly  picking  up  words  dropped  in  general  con- 
versation, and  using  them  afterward  in  the  most  sur- 
prising manner. 

Even  animals  whose  laryngeal  apparatus  is  not 
structurally  adapted  to  the  production  of  articulate 
sounds  may  be  taught  to  utter  them.  Leibnitz  mentions 
a  dog  which  had  learned  to  pronounce  thirty  words  dis- 
tinctly. In  the  Dumfries  Journal  of  January,  1829,  an 
account  is  given  of  a  dog  which  called  out  "  William  " 
so  as  to  be  clearly  understood;  and  Mr.  Eomanes  cites 
the  case  of  an  English  terrier  which  had  been  taught 
to  say,  "How  are  you,  grandmam?"  The  careful  and 
systematic  experiments  now  being  made  in  this  direction 
by  Prof.  A.  Graham  Bell  and  other  scientists  are  ex- 
ceedingly interesting,  and  may  lead  to  important  re- 
sults. 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        301 

In  view  of  these  facts,  it  is  evident  that  the  barrier 
between  human  and  animal  intelligence,  once  deemed 
impassable,  is  becoming  more  and  more  imperceptible, 
and  with  the  rapid  progress  of  zoopsychological  re- 
search will  soon  disappear  altogether.  "  When  we 
remember,"  says  Prof.  Sayce,  "the  inarticulate  clicks 
which  still  form  part  of  the  Bushman's  language,  it 
would  seem  as  if  no  line  of  division  could  be  drawn 
between  man  and  beast,  even  when  language  is  made  the 
test."  Apes  make  use  of  similar  clicks  for  a  like  pur- 
pose, and  these  sounds  are  doubtless  survivals  of  speech 
before  it  became  distinctively  articulate. 

Max  Muller  expresses  great  contempt  for  what  he 
calls  "  nursery  philology,"  which,  he  thinks,  can  throw 
no  light  on  the  origin  of  human  speech.  "  The  two 
problems,  how  a  child  learns  to  speak  English,  and 
how  language  was  elaborated  for  the  first  time,  are  as 
remote  from  each  other  as  the  two  poles."  This  remark 
betrays  an  titter  misconception  of  the  objects  to  be  at- 
tained by  observing  the  earliest  stages  in  the  mental 
development  of  infants.  It  is  not  to  see  how  a  child 
learns  English  or  German  or  any  other  known  language, 
but  how  it  attempts  to  construct  a  language  of  its  own 
for  the  expression  of  its  thoughts,  that  interests  the 
psychologist,  and  may  aid  him  in  solving  the  problem 
of  the  origin  of  speech.  That  it  "  can  be  solved  by  a 
careful  analysis  of  language,  such  as  it  exists  in  the  im- 
mense variety  of  spoken  languages  all  over  the  globe," 
is  highly  improbable,  and,  indeed,  from  the  very  nature 
of  the  questions  involved,  quite  impossible.  All  efforts 
that  have  been  made  in  this  direction  from  the  dawn 
of  philosophical  speculation  to  the  present  time  have 
failed,  and  are  forever  predoomed  to  failure. 


302  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

The  philologist  can  no  more  explain  the  origin  of 
roots  by  the  study  of  languages  than  the  physiologist 
can  discover  the  origin  of  protoplasm  by  dissecting  vital 
organisms,  or  the  psychologist  can  determine  the  origin 
of  the  will  by  appealing  to  consciousness.  Given  roots, 
and  there  is  no  mystery  about  the  growth  and  structure 
of  language;  given  protoplasm,  and  the  evolution  of 
organic  life  in  harmony  with  its  environment  is  per- 
fectly intelligible;  and  a  correct  conception  of  volition 
is  the  safest  clew  to  the  intricate  maze  of  human  con- 
duct and  the  soundest  basis  on  which  to  build  a  system 
of  ethics.  It  must  be  remembered,  too,  that  in  spoken 
and  written  language  there  are  no  roots,  but  only  the 
outgrowths  of  roots — namely,  words  arranged  in  sen- 
tences. The  dictionary  defines  a  root  as  "a  primitive 
form  of  speech,  one  of  the  earliest  terms  employed  in 
language";  but  so  far  as  our  knowledge  extends,  no 
tribe  of  men,  however  primitive,  ever  used  such  a  form 
of  speech,  and  no  such  terms  are  found  in  any  lan- 
guage. Eoots  as  such  have  then  no  real  and  independ- 
ent existence,  and,  while  it  would  be  hardly  correct 
perhaps  to  call  them  fictions  of  the  philologist,  they 
are  the  products  of  philological  analysis,  and  exist  in 
human  speech  only  as  the  protoplasmic  element  out  of 
which  it  is  evolved. 

In  a  brilliant  lecture  on  Atoms,  the  late  Prof.  Clif- 
ford describes  the  movements  of  these  molecules  as  they 
swing  around  and  then  fly  away  in  different  directions, 
mutually  approaching  and  receding,  and  behaving  to 
one  another  "  somewhat  in  the  same  way  as  two  people 
do  who  are  dancing  Sir  Eoger  de  Coverley."  An  en- 
thusiastic critic,  who  quotes  the  whole  passage,  remarks, 
"  Such  scientific  exposition  as  this  is  as  beautiful  aa 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        303 

poetry '';  and  he  might  have  added,  like  poetry,  it  is 
purely  a  creation  of  the  imagination.  The  particles, 
whose  motions  are  so  minutely  and  vividly  depicted, 
are  wholly  hypothetical,  and,  if  a  matter-of-fact  pupil 
were  to  ask  the  professor  where  he  sees  all  these  beauti- 
ful things,  he  could  only  reply,  with  Hamlet,  "In  my 
mind's  eye,  Horatio."  They  belong  to  the  realm  of 
mythopoetic  fancy,  as  truly  as  do  the  Muses  of  Apollo 
or  "  the  rosy-bosomed  Hours  in  fair  Venus'  train." 

Equally  remote  from  human  experience  and  impos- 
sible at  any  period  in  the  evolution  of  the  human  race  is 
Max  Miiller's  often-quoted  description  of  the  processes 
by  which  such  roots  as  pat  and  mar  were  "  tuned  down  " 
into  their  present  "  smooth  and  manageable  "  shape,  and 
rendered  serviceable  as  signs  of  general  concepts.  There 
is  no  stage  in  the  growth  of  human  speech  in  which  one 
can  conceive  of  such  a  process  having  taken  place,  and 
every  attempt  to  imagine  and  to  describe  t  leads  logic- 
ally to  no  end  of  philological  contradictions  and  psy- 
chological absurdities. 

In  the  first  part  of  this  chapter  we  quoted  Max  Miil- 
ler's  theory  of  "  roots  as  ultimate  facts,"  and  his  warn- 
ing of  some  mysterious  danger  that  would  be  incurred 
by  the  rejection  of  this  view.  He  now  adopts  the  hy- 
pothesis suggested  by  the  late  Prof.  Noire,  "that  the 
primitive  roots  of  Aryan  speech  may  owe  their  origin  to 
the  sounds  which  naturally  accompany  many  acts  per- 
formed in  common  by  members  of  a  family,  a  clan,  or  a 
village."  Here  we  have  the  strange  spectacle  of  men  so 
highly  civilized  as  to  be  living  together  in  families,  clans, 
or  villages,  and  yet  by  their  joint  efforts  in  performing 
certain  tasks  that  require  their  united  strength,  creating 
the  primitive  roots  of  their  language.     But  as  all  words 


304  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

are  derived  from  roots,  and  all  human  languages  are 
evolved  out  of  roots,  and  every  thought  that  ever  crossed 
the  mind  of  man  can  be  traced  back  to  a  few  simple  con- 
cepts embodied  in  roots,  what  was  the  language  of  the 
families  and  communities  thus  engaged  in  unconsciously, 
but  not  the  less  really,  producing  the  roots  of  their  lan- 
guage ?  The  only  logical  inference  from  the  premises 
is  that  they  were  speechless,  and  although  Max  Miiller 
distinctly  and  disdainfully  repudiates  the  Homo  alalus, 
and  declares  that  he  knows  nothing  of  such  a  creature, 
the  theory  he  advocates  brings  us  face  to  face,  not  merely 
with  the  Homo  alalus,  as  a  solitary  individual,  but  with 
socially  organized  masses  of  homines  alali,  toiling  to- 
gether and  "  finding  relief  in  emitting  their  breath  in 
more  or  less  musical  modulation,"  and  thus  uttering 
concomitant  sounds  which  express  their  common  acts 
and  become  "  the  germs  of  conceptual  language  "  called 
roots.  It  was  in  this  way  that  the  concept  of  rubbing 
came  to  "  be  expressed  by  mar,  and  that  of  tearing  by 
dar.^'  The  same  holds  true  of  the  roots  jpa  to  protect 
and  m^  to  form.  As  the  words  derived  from  these  roots 
are  necessarily  of  later  origin  than  the  roots  themselves 
we  are  driven  to  the  conclusion  that  the  Aryans,  at  the 
time  when  they  began  to  live  in  families,  clans,  or  vil- 
lages, and  before  they  had  shouted  in  unison  at  their  work 
and  thus  created  these  roots,  had  no  words  for  death 
(mara),  or  disease  (mdri),  or  rent  (ddra),  or  even  for 
father  (pitri)  and  mother  (mdtri),  since  the  parenthetic 
words  are  admitted  to  be  the  oldest  terms  in  the  Aryan 
family  of  languages  used  to  express  these  concepts  or  to 
denote  these  relations,  and  could  not  therefore  have  been 
preceded  by  any  others,  a  conclusion  which  is  a  com- 
plete reductio  ad  absurdum  of  the  whole  symphonic  or 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        305 

"  synergistic  ^'  theory  as  applied  to  the  origin  of  human 
speech. 

Again,  we  are  told  in  a  passage  already  cited  that  the 
point  in  the  process  of  evolution  where  the  animal  ceases 
and  the  man  begins  is  coincident  with  the  formation  of 
the  roots  of  language,  and  that  these  roots  constitute  an 
impassable  barrier  between  man  and  beast.  If  this  state- 
ment be  correct,  we  are  at  a  loss  to  know  how  to  classify 
zoologically  our  primitive  ancestors,  who  had  not  yet 
had  occasion  to  perform  acts  in  common,  and  whom  the 
etymogenetic  clamor  concomitans  had  therefore  not  yet 
provided  with  the  stock  of  radicals  essential  to  the  de- 
velopment of  speech  and  of  general  ideas.  So  far  as 
their  claims  to  humanity  are  concerned,  they  are  cer- 
tainly on  the  wrong  side  of  the  barrier,  and  can  lift  them- 
selves over  it  only  by  united  and  persistent  exertions  of 
the  lungs  in  crying  yo-he-ho! 

That  there  was  a  time  "  when  the  first  sound  of  lan- 
guage burst  forth  from  the  breast  of  the  first  man,  as  yet 
dumb  ^'  is  admitted  by  Max  Miiller,  who  quotes  with  ap- 
proval a  sentence  to  this  effect  from  Steinthal.  Here 
we  are  again  thrown  into  the  disreputable  society  of  "  the 
Homo  alalus,  the  speechless  progenitor  of  Homo  sa- 
piens," notwithstanding  the  cynical  reproach  made  to 
Prof.  Eomanes  for  seeming  to  be  "  so  intimately 
acquainted  "  with  that  questionable  individual.  What 
sort  of  creature  could  "this  first  man,  as  yet  dumb," 
this  unspeakable  Caliban,  have  been?  According  to  the 
definition,  he  did  not  possess  the  one  essential  charac- 
teristic of  man,  and  must  therefore  have  been  a  brute 
''  honour'd  with  a  human  shape  ";  and  although  we  are 
assured  that "  whatever  animals  may  do  or  not  do,  no  ani- 
mal has  ever  spoken,"  speech  did  burst  forth  from  the 


306  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

breast  of  this  primeval  animal,  and  the  anthropoid  prod- 
igy, rational  but  not  yet  orational,  suddenly  spoke  out 
and  became  the  ancestor  of  a  flippant  and  garrulous 
race. 

The  origin  of  language,  like  the  origin  of  life,  is  so 
obscure  that  some  thinkers,  in  despair  of  discovering  it, 
have  been  content  to  let  it  remain  a  mystery  by  declaring 
it  to  be  a  special  gift  of  God,  with  which  man  was  en- 
dowed at  his  creation  or  which  was  taught  him  imme- 
diately afterward  by  his  Creator.  In  either  case,  the 
gift  must  have  been  transmissible  from  generation  to 
generation  in  order  to  become  the  heirloom  of  the  race. 
'No  one,  however,  will  maintain  that  a  child  inherits  its 
language  from  its  parents;  what  it  inherits  is  the  faculty, 
which  its  earliest  progenitors  must  have  also  possessed, 
of  producing  a  language,  and  this  power  is  not  the  less 
creative,  because  with  the  child  of  to-day  the  process  is 
facilitated  and  the  result  determined  by  its  social  and 
domestic  environment.  But  the  existence  of  such  a 
faculty  and  its  continued  exercise  can  be  fully  accounted 
for  by  the  doctrine  of  evolution  without  necessitating  the 
intervention  of  a  deus  ex  machina.  Indeed,  an  act  of 
special  creation  would  explain  or  rather  account  for  the 
possession  of  this  faculty  by  the  person  on  whom  it  was 
miraculously  conferred,  but  not  by  his  descendants.  As 
Steinthal  observes,  "  What  a  man  has  been  exception- 
ally endowed  with  by  God  no  other  man  can  learn  from 
him.^'  Only  that  is  learnable  which  comes  through  the 
natural  and  progressive  development  of  the  power  of 
learning  inherent  in  the  race,  and  which  each  individual 
is  capable  of  learning  for  himself,  though  less  easily 
than  through  intercourse  with  others.  The  theory  of 
the  divine  origin  of  language  may  therefore  be  set  aside 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        307 

as  unscientific,  since  it  evades  the  question  instead  of 
answering  it,  and  complicates  the  problem  by  substi- 
tuting two  mysteries  for  one,  and  as  inadequate,  since 
it  fails  to  account  for  the  phenomena  in  their  historical 
continuity. 

Apart  from  the  untenable  assumption  of  supernat- 
uralism,  all  principles  involved  in  the  origin  of  language 
may  be  reduced  to  three  :  the  onomatopoetic,  the  inter- 
jectional  and  the  synergistic  principle,  or  according  to 
Max  Miiller's  vernacular  and  expressive  nomenclature, 
the  bow-wow,  the  pooh-pooh,  and  the  yo-he-ho  theories. 
"  Those  who  appeal  to  words  like  thunder  as  derived  from 
the  rumbling  sound  in  the  clouds  without  any  concep- 
tual root  standing  between  our  conceptual  word  thunder 
and  these  unconceptual  noises,  hold  the  bow-wow 
theory.  Those  who  hold  that  fiend  is  derived  from  fie, 
without  any  conceptual  root  standing  between  the  un- 
conceptual fie  and  the  conceptual  word  iiend,  hold  the 
pooh-pooh  theory.  Those  who  would  dtTive  to  heave 
and  to  hoist  from  sounds  like  yo-he-ho,  would  hold 
what  may  be  called  the  yo-he-ho  theory."  In  this  con- 
nection. Max  Miiller  states  that  "  the  yo-he-ho  theory  is 
the  very  opposite  of  what  Noire  called  the  synergistic 
theory "  ;  although  he  does  not  make  the  distinction 
clear  and  was  himself  the  first  who  substituted  this  slang 
term  for  the  dignified  Greek  designation,  when  he  en- 
deavoured to  show  how  the  roots  mar,  ddr,  and  tan  might 
have  been  produced  by  men  engaged  in  common  acts  of 
grinding,  tearing,  and  stretching,  and  finding  relief  in 
emitting  their  breath  in  musical  modulation,  as  sailors 
are  wont  to  do  in  pulling  ropes.  The  same  synergistic 
activity  of  primitive  men  in  gulping  their  food  and  the 
noise  of  simultaneous  deglutition  would  give  rise  to  the 


308  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

root  gar,  to  swallow;  whereas  the  reverse  process  of  dis- 
gorging the  contents  of  an  overloaded  stomach  and  the 
unmistakable  sound  attending  this  operation,  especially 
when  performed  by  several  persons  synchronously,  as 
was  the  custom  of  Eoman  gormands  at  their  banquets, 
would  be  expressed  by  vam,  a  root  that  is  found  in  every 
Aryan  tongue,  thus  proving  at  what  a  very  early  period 
this  vigorous  race  began,  as  the  Germans  say  "to  call 
upon  the  name  of  St.  Ulrich.'^  It  will  never  do  for  the 
godfather  of  Yo-he-ho,  who  stood  sponsor  for  the  in- 
fant and  held  it  so  tenderly  in  his  arms  at  the  font,  to 
repudiate  this  youngest  born  of  philological  bantlings, 
simply  because,  as  it  grows  older,  it  bears  so  strong  a  re- 
semblance to  its  big  and  burly  brother  Bow-wow. 

As  regards  the  second  of  the  above-mentioned  theo- 
ries, we  can  hardly  believe  that  even  the  most  inveterate 
pooh-poohist  would  derive  fiend  from  fie  either  directly 
or  indirectly.  Irascible  Germans,  under  strong  excite- 
ment, are  apt  to  link  the  words  together  in  the  scornful 
phrase,  Pfui!  Teufel!  But  no  one  who  has  given  any 
thought  to  the  subject  would  connect  them  etymologic- 
ally. 

In  the  sentence  which  we  have  quoted  there  seems 
to  be  also  a  queer  confusion  of  ideas  concerning  the  con- 
ceptual and  the  unconceptual.  Thunder,  regarded  as 
the  report  which  follows  the  discharge  of  atmospherical 
electricity,  may  be  properly  spoken  of  as  an  unconcep- 
tual noise;  yet  it  is  something  more  than  this  to  the 
primitive  man  or  the  savage,  who  hears  in  it  the  voice  of 
an  angry  deity.  Again,  if  a  person  wishes  to  inform  an- 
other that  he  has  heard  thunder  by  pointing  to  the  sky 
and  imitating  the  sound,  the  rumble  thus  produced  is 
no  longer  unconceptual,  but  becomes  the  sign  of  a  dis- 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        309 

tinct  and  intelligible  idea.  So,  too,  of  interjections, 
such  as  fie  and  fudge,  they  express  the  concept  of  min- 
gled incredulity  and  contempt  as  clearly  as  any  colloca- 
tion of  words  in  a  sentence  could  do.  This  theory  is 
carried  so  far  by  its  author  as  to  lead  him  to  the  assertion 
that  mispronunciation  annihilates  a  word,  the  change  of 
a  vowel  or  consonant,  or  "  only  an  accent  '^  sufficing  to 
deprive  it  of  its  articulate  character  and  to  resolve  it 
into  empty  noise,  or  "  what  Heraclitus  would  call  a  mere 
psophos."  This  position  is  justly  characterized  by  Prof. 
Whitney  as  "not  only  wrong,  but  ludicrously  wrong.'^ 
What  becomes  of  the  hundreds  of  words  in  the  English 
language  which  many  persons  habitually  mispronounce, 
and  even  lexicographers  accent  differently?  Does  this 
deviation  in  orthoepy  destroy  the  conceptual  quality  of 
the  word  and  reduce  it  to  a  mere  noise?  As  regards  the 
term  psophos  (i/ro</)os),  here  somewhat  pedantically  in- 
troduced, it  was  used  by  Greek  writers  in  distinction 
from  phone  (</)cuvi}),  vocal  sound  or  tone,  and  Aristotle 
calls  phone  the  psophos  of  animate  creatures  [rj  <f>(DV7j  \j/ocf>os 
TLS  eoTLv  ifixf/vxov), hut  it  did  not  necessarily  mean  mere 
noise.  It  was  also  employed  to  denote  the  cries  of  peo- 
ple in  the  street  or  on  the  market  place,  and  other  sig- 
nificant sounds,  including  those  produced  by  insects  as 
well  as  the  conventional  rap  on  the  door  (i/fo</>ctv  t^v 
Ovpav)  by  which  a  visitor  announced  his  presence  and 
virtually  asked  whether  he  might  enter.  On  the  other 
hand,  phone  was  applied  to  the  utterances  of  beasts  as 
well  as  of  men,  and  even  to  the  noises  of  inanimate 
things,  as  when  Sophocles  speaks  of  the  voice  of  the 
loom  (/cep/ctSo?  (fxavrj).  Indeed,  if  any  inference  could 
be  drawn  from  an  exhaustive  and  critical  comparison 
of  the  passages  in  which  these  words  are  used,  not 


310  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

only  by  Heraclitus,  but  in  a  far  more  frequent  and 
philosophical  manner  by  Aristotle  and  his  contempora- 
ries, it  would  certainly  not  favour  the  notion  that  a  word 
is  robbed  of  its  significance  by  mispronunciation,  or  con- 
verted into  mere  noise  by  a  false  accent.  That  epochal 
clamor  concomitans  in  which,  according  to  the  syner- 
gistic and,  as  Whitney  calls  it,  "  utterly  fantastic 
theory,"  language  had  its  origin,  would  have  been  to  the 
Greeks  a  mere  psophos. 

Wholly  untenable,  too,  is  the  assertion  that  no 
traces  of  conceptual  thought  are  discoverable  in  the  lower 
animals.  The  very  lowest  forms  of  organic  life  com- 
municate with  each  other  by  means  of  sounds,  although 
in  many  cases  the  manner  of  their  production  has  not  yet 
been  definitely  determined.  Some  insects  possess  vocal 
organs  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term  and  are  thus  en- 
abled to  give  voice  to  their  emotions,  while  others  ex- 
press their  desires  in  a  more  mechanical  way  by  the  buzz- 
ing vibration  of  their  wings  or  the  stridulous  friction  of 
their  legs.  The  death^s-head  moth  has  a  sort  of  bagpipe 
arrangement,  consisting  of  an  internal  sack  and  a  probos- 
cis through  which  the  air  is  forced,  producing  a  shrill 
and  doleful  treble  like  that  of  the  so-called  chanter  of  the 
Scotch  instrument.  Gnats  have  a  twofold  mode  of  ex- 
pression— a  voice  accompanied  by  deeper  tones  made  by 
the  movement  of  the  wings.  This  combination  of 
sounds  constitutes  their  language  and,  in  a  limited  de- 
gree, appeals  to  them  in  the  same  manner  as  speech  does 
to  man,  so  that  they  are  attracted  by  an  imitation  of  it 
with  the  human  voice  or  on  a  violin.  Prof.  Landois 
gives  a  comical  example  of  this  in  his  work  on  Thierstim- 
men:  "  One  day,"  he  says,  "  I  found  my  servant  boy  in 
the  garden  engaged  in  his  favourite  occupation  of  doing 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        311 

nothing.  By  chance  a  swarm  of  musquitoes  was  hover- 
ing in  the  air  near  me.  I  called  the  fellow  and  reproved 
him  for  his  laziness,  and  raising  my  voice  to  the  mus- 
quito  pitch  of  high  E  said:  *  If  you  don't  go  and  hlack 
the  hoots  properly,  I'll  have  you  stung  to  death  by 
musquitoes.'  The  words  were  hardly  uttered  when  the 
whole  swarm  came  down  upon  him,  causing  him  to  flee 
in  terror  from  the  wizard,  who  had  even  the  musquitoes 
at  his  command."  In  this  purely  musical  language  the 
tone  varies  slightly  perhaps  with  the  individual,  but  very 
perceptibly  with  the  sex  of  the  insect,  the  male  having  a 
somewhat  higher  note  than  the  female.  With  every  ad- 
vance in  the  ascending  scale  of  animal  life  the  power  of 
expression  increases,  gradually  ceasing  to  be  a  monoto- 
nous humor  dull  drone,  and  becoming  considerably  modu- 
lated and  growing  more  and  more  articulate  until  it 
reaches  its  highest  development  in  human  speech. 
Great  as  may  be  the  disparity  between  the  squeak  of  a 
mouse,  the  chatter  of  a  parrot,  the  roar  of  a  gorilla,  the 
gibberish  of  a  Bushman,  and  the  eloquence  of  a  Demos- 
thenes, there  is  really  no  break  in  this  long  process  of 
evolution  corresponding  to  the  growth  of  the  intellectual 
faculties  in  the  several  species.  Every  creature  has  a 
language  of  its  own  composed  of  significant  sounds  in- 
telligible to  its  kind;  and  there  is  no  point  in  the  devel- 
opment of  vocal  utterance  at  which  it  can  be  said  hitherto 
these  sounds  have  been  empty  and  unconceptual  noises, 
henceforth  they  express  the  wants,  emotions,  and  ideas  of 
those  who  use  them. 

Mr.  James  Weir,  Jr.,  to  whose  special  study  of  the 
senses  of  the  lower  animals  reference  has  been  made  in 
a  former  chaper,  says  that,  although  ants  are  generally 
supposed  to  eSmmunicate  with  one  another  through  their 


312  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

antennae,  they  may  do  so  by  means  of  sounds  so  low  as 
to  be  inaudible  to  the  human  ear,  but  adds  that  he  has 
never  been  able  to  find  in  them  either  vocal  organs  or 
instruments  of  stridulation,  such  as  the  genus  Gryllus 
possesses.  The  recent  microscopical  observations  of 
M.  Charles  Janet,  however,  have  led  him  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  ants  are  provided  with  vocal  organs,  and  he 
claims  to  have  succeeded  in  ascertaining  by  the  use  of 
the  microphone  that  they  give  utterance  to  a  consider- 
able variety  of  tones,  which  he  assumes  to  be  expressive 
of  different  emotions. 

From  a  philological  point  of  view  Max  Miiller  has 
as  slight  consideration  for  beasts  as  for  babies,  taking 
every  occasion  to  disparage  the  teachings  of  zoopsychol- 
ogy, and  refusing,  as  he  says,  to  argue  with  any  philoso- 
pher "  either  in  the  nursery  or  in  the  menagerie.'' 
Curiously  enough,  it  now  seems  as  though  the  possibili- 
ties of  the  menagerie  in  this  direction  had  been  strangely 
overlooked,  and  the  ultimate  elements  of  human  speech, 
"  phonetic  cells,"  might  yet  be  discovered  in  the  mon- 
key's cage.  About  a  dozen  years  have  elapsed  since  Mr. 
E.  L.  Garner  began  his  study  of  the  language  of  quadru- 
mans  in  the  Zoological  Garden  at  Cincinnati.*  Confined 
in  a  large  cage  with  a  number  of  smaller  monkeys  was  a 
mandril  endowed  with  all  the  ugly  characteristics  of  his 
kind.  This  beast,  which  in  its  wild  state  is  spoken  of  by 
the  natives  as  the  "  forest  devil,"  and  which  science  has 

*  Although  Mr.  Garner's  researches  have  led  to  no  definite  re- 
sults, and  he  has  been  rather  harshly  characterized  as  "  a  sensa- 
tional charlatan,"  I  prefer  to  let  my  remarks  on  his  attempt  to 
solve  the  problem  of  simian  speech  remain  as  they  were  originally 
written,  since  they  could  not  be  eliminated  without  impairing  the 
general  discussion  of  the  subject. 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        313 

named  the  "  dog-headed  horror  ^'  (Cynoceplialus  mor- 
mon), and  whose  habits  of  life  justify  both  designations, 
is  the  most  hideous  in  appearance,  the  most  cruel  in  dis- 
position, the  lewdest  and  wickedest  of  baboons.  Per- 
haps in  no  other  creature  is  "  pure  cussedness,"  or  the 
love  of  evil  for  eviFs  sake,  so  highly  developed.  It  is  the 
only  animal,  except  man,  that  undermines  its  health  and 
dies  a  premature  death  through  excessive  and  unnatural 
indulgence  of  its  lusts.  Jardine  reports  the  case  of  a 
mandril  that,  in  becoming  domesticated,  took  readily 
to  the  vices  of  civilization,  brandy-drinking,  and  smoking, 
although  it  greatly  preferred  alcohol  to  tobacco.  Broek- 
mann,  however,  succeeded  not  only  in  taming  one,  but 
also  in  overcoming  its  vicious  propensities  by  a  proper 
course  of  training.  He  taught  it  a  variety  of  tricks, 
which  it  had  to  perform  every  day  in  an  orderly  manner 
and  gradually  took  pride  in  performing  well,  thus  prov- 
ing that  if  "  idleness  is  the  parent  of  vice,''  regular  indus- 
try is  the  source  of  sobriety.  The  distinguished  natural- 
ist Reichenbach,  who  watched  Broekmann's  experiment 
with  lively  interest,  was  struck  by  the  wonderful  effect 
which  the  mere  fact  of  having  something  definite  to  do 
produced  in  transforming  the  wildest  and  most  wanton 
of  baboons  into  a  decent  and  quite  companionable  crea- 
ture. As  the  result  of  this  systematic  discipline,  "its 
lower  and  purely  animal  propensities  and  carnal  appe- 
tites, which  tended  to  undermine  its  own  existence,  be- 
gan to  calm,  and  ceased  to  be  easily  excited  as  its  higher 
faculties  were  awakened  and  called  into  exercise,  and  as 
it  was  drawn  upward  through  instruction  and  through 
love  of  the  feats  whose  performance  had  kindled  in  it 
the  first  spark  of  mental  activity  and  now  kept  its 
powers  in  a  constant  state  of  tension."    Here  we  have  an 


314  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

application  of  the  same  means  that  are  used  to  civilize 
a  savage  or  to  train  up  a  child  in  the  way  it  should  go; 
and  Broekmann's  success  in  curbing  the  cruel  mandril 
of  its  will,  elevating  it  socially  into  an  agreeable  and  af- 
fectionate friend,  and  educating  it  histrionically  to  be 
the  "  star  "  of  a  monkey  theatre,  is  not  only  a  triumph 
of  pedagogical  patience  and  skill,  but  also  a  striking 
proof  of  the  animal's  latent  capabilities. 

The  mandril  at  Cincinnati  was  a  savage  brute  which 
killed  several  of  its  less  powerful  associates  and  made  the 
lives  of  the  rest  hardly  worth  living.  They  were  never 
free  from  alarm  and  always  on  the  alert  to  escape  the  as- 
saults of  their  common  foe,  whose  movements  they  anx- 
iously watched  and  quickly  reported  to  each  other.  Mr. 
Garner,  who  observed  them  day  after  day,  soon  became 
convinced  that  their  cries  and  chatterings  were  not  mere 
unconceptual  noises  or  ejaculations  inspired  by  individ- 
ual fear,  but  vocal  expressions  of  ideas  conveying  definite 
information.  He  endeavoured  to  start  a  conversation 
by  imitating  these  sounds,  but  the  monkeys,  although 
their  attention  was  somewhat  attracted  by  his  utter- 
ances, evidently  failed  to  comprehend  his  broken  Simian, 
and  in  a  short  time  ceased  to  pay  heed  to  a  creature  who 
could  not  talk  better  than  that.  It  then  occurred  to  him 
to  use  the  phonograph,  which  would  not  only  reproduce 
these  sounds  with  precision,  but  would  also  repeat  them 
at  pleasure  and  thus  enable  the  human  voice  by  persistent 
practice  to  articulate  them  distinctly.  This  plan  was 
successful,  and  the  monkeys  showed  by  their  actions 
that  they  clearly  understood  what  the  phonograph  said. 
It  is  not  necessary  here  to  enter  into  the  details  of  his 
subsequent  experiments,  the  results  of  which  he  has 
embodied  in  a  volume;  and  although  one  may  not  accept 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        315 

some  of  his  inferences,  his  researches  all  tend  to  confirm 
the  assumption  that  monkeys  have  a  language  of  their 
own,  and  that  man  can  learn  it  and  converse  with  them 
in  their  own  tongue.  Mr.  Garner  is  now  in  the  wilds  of 
Africa,  amply  equipped  with  the  instruments  requisite 
for  his  personal  safety  and  for  the  pursuit  of  his  inves- 
tigations in  the  habitat  of  the  gorilla  and  the  chimpan- 
zee; and  the  fruits  of  the  studies  which  he  is  carrying  on 
under  so  favourable  circumstances  will  be  awaited  with 
interest.  Nomen  et  omen:  may  he  return  with  a  well- 
filled  garner! 

Brehm  remarked  nearly  twenty  years  ago:  "  The  lan- 
guage of  apes  may  be  called  quite  rich;  at  least  every  ape 
has  at  its  command  a  great  variety  of  tones  for  the  ex- 
pression of  different  emotions.  Man  also  learns  the 
significance  of  these  sounds,  which  are  difficult  to  describe 
and  still  more  difficult  to  imitate."  Indeed,  without 
the  aid  of  the  phonograph  it  would  have  be3n  impossible 
to  determine  their  exact  nature  and  to  reduce  them  to 
a  phonological  system.  This  is  an  interesting  illustra- 
tion of  the  far-reaching  and  beneficent  influence  of 
great  inventions.  The  phonograph  may  yet  render  as 
valuable  service  to  philology  by  extending  the  field  of  lin- 
guistic research  as  the  microscope  has  rendered  to  medi- 
cine, and  especially  to  bacteriology. 

It  has  been  repeatedly  asserted  and  generally  ac- 
cepted that  "  no  animal  has  the  power  of  forming  roots," 
and  that  there  is  "  not  one  root  in  the  language  of  ani- 
mals." This  statement  is  sheer  assumption,  and  for 
aught  we  know  the  very  reverse  of  the  proposition  may 
be  true  and  the  language  of  animals  consist  chiefly,  if 
not  wholly,  of  roots.  The  origin  of  these  constituent 
elements  of  language  is  a  mystery.  ISTo  philologist  can 
21 


316  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

tell  how  they  arose  or  why  they  should  convey  one  mean- 
ing rather  than  another,  except  so  far  as  their  genesis 
may  be  explained  in  a  few  cases  by  onomatopoetic  sug- 
gestion. The  most  natural  supposition  is  that  they  are 
the  heirlooms  of  the  anthropoid  race,  which  may  have 
been  transmitted  to  man  from  the  semi-human  primates 
of  the  Miocene  age,  already  highly  specialized  enough  to 
be  capable  of  chipping  flints.  The  beauty  and  force  of 
human  speech  and  its  superiority  to  the  utterances  of 
brutes  are  due,  not  to  the  fact  that  it  has  its  origin  in 
roots,  the  very  existence  of  which  is  overlooked  by  the 
great  majority  of  men  and  detected  only  by  philological 
analysis,  but  to  its  marvelous  growth  out  of  roots,  to  its 
grammatical  and  syntactical  structure,  its  elaborate  and 
complicated  system  of  cases  and  tenses,  the  etymological 
relations  of  its  parts,  and  the  various  means  employed  to 
express  the  nicest  shades  and  most  subtile  suggestions  of 
thought  and  feeling.  It  is  this  wonderful  and  never- 
ceasing  evolution  that  makes  human  language  what  it 
is  and  distinguishes  it  from  the  extremely  scanty  and 
comparatively  stationary  language  of  all  animals  from 
the  death-watch  to  the  Dryopithecus. 

Reasoning  from  what  we  know  of  the  language  of 
apes,  that  of  "the  missing  link"  must  have  consisted 
mostly  of  monosyllabic  sounds  expressive  of  simple  con- 
cepts, which,  in  proportion  as  his  posterity  reached  a 
higher  degree  of  intellectual  development  and  became 
partially  humanized,  were  gradually  modified  in  mean- 
ing by  prefixes  and  suffixes  and  organically  correlated 
by  inflection,  until  the  original  monosyllabic  utterance, 
often  perhaps  little  more  than  a  short  and  sharp  outcry, 
ceased  to  be  used  except  in  these  derivative  and  differ- 
entiated forms.    The  root  was  thus  merged  and  wholly 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        317 

lost  sight  of  in  the  word,  as  is  now  the  case  with  all  hu- 
man tongues,  where  its  existence  is  unsuspected,  until 
the  philologist  grubs  it  up.  No  one  maintains  that 
human  language  was  evolved  in  this  manner  out  of  that 
of  the  gorilla  or  chimpanzee  or  any  other  existing  tribe 
of  Simia.  As  the  different  races  of  men  are  descended 
from  different  anthropoid  species  now  extinct,  so  the 
diversity  of  tongues  arose  from  the  same  cause.  These 
anthropoid  species  or  types  died  out  because  they  were 
too  nearly  akin  to  man  to  compete  with  him  in  the  strug- 
gle for  existence;  they  could  survive  only  by  sharing  in 
the  advance  of  the  race,  and  by  sharing  in  it  they  ceased 
to  be  what  they  were;  in  either  case  they  were  doomed 
to  disappear. 

In  this  connection  we  may  refer  again  to  the  asser- 
tion of  the  identity  of  language  and  thought,  or  the  state- 
ment that  reasoning  can  not  be  carried  on  without  words. 
If  this  principle  be  correct,  it  is  rather  queer  that  the  most 
thoughtful  persons  should  be,  as  a  rule,  the  least  wordy, 
or  as  Shakespeare  says  of  Nature,  "  deep  clerks  she 
dumbs,"  as  though  it  were  one  of  her  universal  laws. 
Emotionally  there  are,  as  Wordsworth  tells  us,  "  thoughts 
too  deep  for  words";  intellectually  there  are  thinking 
processes,  such  as  the  abstract  consideration  of  quantity 
and  magnitude  and  their  relations  in  pure  mathematics, 
for  the  expression  and  realization  of  which  words  are 
far  too  clumsy  and  inexact,  and  recourse  must  be  had  to 
figures,  algebraic  characters,  and  arithmetical  and  geo- 
metrical formulas.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  low 
stage  of  thought,  which  a  few  gestures  or  exclamations 
are  fully  adequate  to  represent.  Indeed,  in  Old  Chinese, 
the  archaic  Kuan-hua,  we  have  an  extended  literature 
recorded  in  what  is  essentially  a  language  of  signs,  in- 


318  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

telligible  to  the  eye  but  not  to  the  ear,  and  having  no 
grammatical  connection  or  any  relation  to  each  other 
except  propinquity.  Sinograms,  ideograms,  and  all 
hieroglyphics  and  picture-writing  are  relics  of  this  early 
period  in  the  evolution  of  alphabetical  language. 

The  beast,  as  well  as  man,  is  not  confined  to  the  use  of 
what  might  be  called  its  native  tongue,  but  is  capable 
of  learning  foreign  languages.  Not  only  do  parrots, 
ravens,  and  other  birds  acquire  considerable  facility  in 
human  speech,  but  animals,  in  which  the  social  instinct 
is  strongly  developed,  adopt  the  means  of  communicat- 
ing thoughts  employed  by  other  animals  with  which 
they  habitually  associate.  A  striking  example  of  this 
adaptation  is  given  by  Dr.  Paul  Carus:  "If  ants  of  a 
special  kind  rob  the  larv89  of  another  kind  and  educate 
them  as  their  slaves,  the  slaves  will  in  case  of  war  or  dan- 
ger stand  by  their  masters  even  against  their  own  folks. 
They  evidently  speak  the  language  of  the  hill  in  which 
they  have  been  raised,"  just  as  children  carried  off  in 
their  infancy  speak  the  language  of  the  tribe  in  which 
they  have  been  reared,  and  indeed  as  all  persons  speak 
the  language  of  the  community  in  which  they  have 
grown  up. 

The  question  whether  the  roots  of  language  ever  ex- 
isted by  themselves  or  whether  any  language  could  con- 
sist solely  of  roots  may  be  "  a  foolish  question  "  to  the 
philologist,  who  does  not  dare  to  go  beyond  them;  it  is 
certainly  a  question  which  his  methods  will  never  solve. 
Less  than  a  century  ago  there  were  eminent  scholars  who 
regarded  the  study  of  Sanskrit  as  a  vain  pursuit,  and 
some  denounced  the  language  itself  as  a  fabrication  of 
cunning  Brahmans.  Even  as  late  as  1820  the  distin- 
guished Orientalist  Silvestre  de  Sacy  wrote  to  Bopp, 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        319 

urging  him  to  abandon  this  study  as  having  no  immediate 
relation  to  classical  or  theological  studies;  to-day  every 
one  knows  that  it  has  revolutionized  these  studies.  The 
philologist  no  longer  devotes  himself  exclusively  to 
classical  languages  or  even  to  those  of  civilized  nations, 
but  extends  his  researches  to  the  dialects  of  barbarous 
tribes.  Nevertheless  there  are  still  those  who  refuse  to 
enlarge  the  borders  of  their  science  so  as  to  include  any 
of  the  lower  animals,  however  intelligent,  and  obstinately 
reject  all  contributions  from  this  quarter.  Yet  if  we 
ever  discover  the  origin  of  roots,  it  will  probably  be  by 
searching  for  them  in  this  direction.  Least  of  all  is  it 
befitting  an  earnest  and  broad-minded  scholar  to  treat 
such  investigations  with  facetious  flippancy,  and  to  re- 
pudiate the  conclusions  of  the  zoopsychologist  without 
having  any  profounder  knowledge  of  the  mental  powers 
of  animals  than  can  be  obtained  by  walking  through  a 
museum  and  contemplating  the  dry  hides  to  which  the 
taxidermist  has  given  the  semblance  of  life. 

The  enthusiasm  with  which  Mr.  Garner  has  devoted 
himself  to  the  study  of  simian  speech,  and  the  general 
interest  excited  by  his  discoveries,  naturally  suggest  a 
comparison  of  his  investigations  with  those  of  his  pred- 
ecessors in  this  department  of  linguistic  research.  Per- 
haps the  most  serious  and  scientific  attempt  of  this  kind 
was  made  nearly  a  century  ago  by  Gottfried  Immanuel 
Wenzel,  who  published  at  Vienna,  in  1808,  a  volume  of 
216  pages  entitled  Neue  auf  Vernunft  und  Erfahrung 
gegriindete  Entdeckungen  iiber  die  Sprache  der  Thiere 
(New  Discoveries  concerning  the  Language  of  Animals, 
based  on  Reason  and  Experience),  in  which  he  main- 
tained that  the  lower  animals  are  capable  of  expressing 
their  thoughts  and  emotions  by  means  of  articulate 


320  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

sounds,  and  that  these  utterances  are  not  only  intelli- 
gible to  their  kind,  but  may  also  be  understood  by  man, 
indicated  by  alphabetical  signs,  and  thus  reduced  to 
writing.  He  made  a  list  of  the  sounds  uttered  by  thirty 
different  birds  and  beasts,  and  prepared  a  dictionary  of 
more  than  twenty  pages,  to  which  he  added  a  number 
of  translations  from  animal  into  human  speech.  These 
so-called  translations  are  very  free,  and  give  merely  a 
paraphrastic  statement  of  what  he  supposes  to  be  the 
significance  of  certain  canine  and  feline  tones,  the  ver- 
sions being  confined  to  his  interpretations  of  the  collo- 
quies of  cats  and  dogs.  As  an  illustration  of  his 
proficiency  in  this  language  and  the  practical  value  of 
such  knowledge,  he  relates  an  incident,  which  sounds  as 
though  it  might  belong  to  the  ancient  and  fabulous 
literature  known  to  the  Germans  as  Jdgerlatein,  or  hun- 
ters' Latin.  He  once  went  to  visit  a  friend,  who  was  a 
great  huntsman,  but  on  learning  that  he  had  gone  out 
with  his  gun  waited  for  him  to  return;  meanwhile  he 
took  a  book  and  sat  down  under  a  tree  near  a  pen  in 
which  some  foxes  were  confined.  Suddenly  he  heard 
them  utter  certain  sounds  which  according  to  his  vocab- 
ulary were  expressive  of  surprise  and  joy,  and  after 
listening  for  a  time  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  foxes 
had  discovered  some  means  of  escape  and  were  exulting 
over  the  prospect  of  regaining  their  freedom.  When 
the  hunter  returned,  "Wenzel  informed  him  of  what  he 
had  heard  and  advised  him  to  look  into  the  matter,  but 
was  only  laughed  at  for  his  credulity  and  assured  that  the 
pen  was  perfectly  secure.  They  went  into  the  house, 
where  they  were  taking  some  refreshments  and  talking 
about  other  affairs,  when  a  servant  rushed  in  greatly 
excited  and  announced  that  the  foxes  had  escaped. 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        321 

Wenzel  admits  that  the  language  of  animals  is  ex- 
tremely simple  and  limited,  and  consequently  monoto- 
nously repetitious;  the  same  combination  of  sounds 
uttered  with  a  stronger  or  weaker  intonation  serves  to 
denote  a  variety  of  mental  states  and  must  be  largely 
supplemented  by  lively  pantomime.  In  conclusion,  he 
has  eighteen  pages  of  what  he  calls  an  "  animal  pathog- 
nomonic-mimetic  alphabet/'  showing  the  value  and  func- 
tion of  each  part  of  the  physical  organism,  from  the  teeth 
to  the  tail,  as  a  vehicle  of  expression.  Dogs  and  cats 
fairly  bristle  with  strong  emotions,  and  birds  show  their 
ruffled  feelings  in  their  feathers  and  wax  eloquent  with 
their  wings.  Wenzel  is  convinced  that  every  species  of 
animal  has  its  own  dialect,  which  is  to  be  regarded  as  a 
modification  of  the  common  or  generic  language  of  the 
race  to  which  it  belongs.  Thus  he  seems  to  think  that 
the  zebra  would  understand  the  ass  more  readily  than 
the  horse,  because  the  first  two  are  more  ck  sely  affiliated, 
although  all  three  are  endowed  with  equine  speech.  The 
same  principle  applies  to  the  different  varieties  of  the 
domestic  hog  in  relation  to  other  suilline  quadrupeds. 

As  an  example  of  the  extent  to  which  animals  may 
acquire  a  knowledge  of  human  speech  he  prints  a  com- 
munication from  a  clergyman  who  had  taught  his  dog  to 
fetch  books  from  his  library  in  an  adjoining  room. 
"  Fido,"  he  would  say,  '^  on  the  table  near  the  window 
are  a  quarto,  an  octavo,  and  a  duodecimo;  go  and  get  the 
quarto."  Fido  never  failed  to  bring  the  volume  desig- 
nated. He  had  trained  the  dog  to  perform  this  service 
by  showing  him  a  book  and  saying  very  distinctly  and 
repeatedly  quarto,  octavo,  or  duodecimo,  and  then  laying 
it  down  in  the  library  and  making  him  fetch  it.  In  the 
same  manner  the  dog  was  taught  to  bring  many  other 


$22  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

objects,  the  names  of  which  he  seldom  confounded  or 
misunderstood.  The  clever  animal  could  also  be  sent 
on  errands.  "  Fido,"  the  clergyman  would  say,  "  go  to 
I^Ir.  B.  and  tell  him  that  I  shall  call  upon  him  to-day." 
Thereupon  Fido  ran  to  Mr.  B.'s  house  and  on  finding 
him  gave  three  short  barks,  which  were  perfectly  intelli- 
gible to  the  person  thus  addressed.  If  any  one  called 
when  the  clergyman  was  out,  Fido  barked  once;  and  he 
did  the  same  if  his  master  did  not  wish  to  be  disturbed 
and  bade  him  tell  the  caller  that  he  was  not  at  home. 
He  announced  a  visitor  by  scratching  on  the  door  and 
barking  twice.  A  Bavarian  family  at  Munich  has  a  dog 
that  deems  it  highly  improper  for  gentlemen  to  wear 
their  hats  in  the  house,  but  is  sufficiently  gallant  not  to 
find  fault  with  ladies  for  doing  so.  An  American,  who 
wished  to  test  the  animal's  discriminating  sense  of  the 
fitness  of  things  in  this  respect,  entered  the  room  and  sat 
down  with  his  hat  on.  The  dog  looked  at  him  disapprov- 
ingly for  a  moment  and  then  began  to  bark,  with  eyes 
intently  fixed  upon  the  hat.  As  the  unmannerly  visitor 
continued  the  conversation  without  paying  any  atten- 
tion to  these  admonitions,  the  dog  sprang  up  and,  seiz- 
ing the  hat  by  the  brim,  pulled  it  off  and  quietly  laid  it 
on  a  chair. 

Wenzel  also  tells  the  story  of  a  dog  whom  his  master 
used  to  send  to  the  market  for  meat,  and  who  would 
stand  before  the  kind  of  meat  he  was  instructed  to  get, 
beef,  mutton,  or  veal,  and  bark  once,  twice,  or  thrice, 
according  to  the  number  of  pounds  desired.  The 
butcher  filled  the  order,  and  the  dog  trotted  home  with 
his  purchase  and  the  cheerful  consciousness  of  having 
done  his  duty.  A  still  more  remarkable  case  of  this 
kind  occurred  recently  in  a  German  town,  where  the 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        323 

dog  went  regularly  to  the  market  and  always  to  the 
same  stall.  One  day  the  animal  took  offence  at  some- 
thing and  immediately  transferred  his  custom  to  another 
stall.  A  few  weeks  later  the  owner  of  the  dog  met  the 
first  butcher  and  remarked  that  the  meat,  although  a 
little  cheaper,  was  not  quite  so  good  as  formerly. 
"  There  must  be  some  mistake,"  was  the  reply,  "  for 
I  have  not  sold  you  any  meat  for  a  long  time."  This 
statement  led  to  an  investigation  and  final  solution  of 
the  mystery,  which  created  much  amusement  and  ex- 
cited no  little  astonishment  that  canine  minds  could 
'•^such  high  resentment  show."  Wenzel's  little  book 
is  full  of  interesting  anecdotes  illustrating  his  subject, 
and  has  a  frontispiece  representing  a  landscape,  re- 
sembling the  traditional  pictures  of  the  garden  of  Eden 
found  in  old  Bibles,  with  an  ape,  a  dog,  a  horse,  and 
a  bull  in  the  foreground,  and  the  legend  underneath: 
"  They  do  not  lie;  their  speech  is  truth.' 

The  French  physicist,  E.  Radeau,  in  a  work  on  acous- 
tics, published  in  1869,  treats  incidentally  of  the  lan- 
guage of  animals,  which  he  thinks  one  could,  by  careful 
observation,  learn  to  understand  and  even  to  speak  with 
fluency.  Mersenne,  in  his  Harmonic  Universelle,  as- 
serts that  men  speak  from  a  volitional  impulse  and 
utter  vocal  sounds  in  the  exercise  of  a  power  of  the  mind 
which  they  are  free  not  to  exercise  unless  they  choose  to 
do  so,  whereas  the  lower  animals  use  their  voices  under 
the  influence  of  natural  necessity,  howling,  shrieking, 
singing,  etc.,  because  under  the  circumstances  they  can 
not  do  otherwise,  being  subject  to  forces  which  they  are 
absolutely  unable  to  resist.  The  vexed  question  of  the 
freedom  or  necessity  of  the  will  in  human  action,  which 
metaphj^sics  has  vainly  endeavoured  to  solve,  has  been 


324  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

reopened  by  natural  science  and  evolutionary  biology 
and  is  now  discussed  on  a  broader  basis  and  with  the 
prospect  of  positive  results.  Whatever  may  be  the  final 
issue  of  these  investigations,  it  is  certain  that  the  old 
Cartesian  distinction  between  man  and  brute  in  this  re- 
spect can  no  longer  be  maintained.  Eadeau  is  right  in 
rejecting  Mersenne's  theory  as  involving  a  too  subtile 
psychological  distinction  and  in  declaring  that  his  doc- 
trine of  natural  necessity  might  be  applied  with  equal 
force  to  many  an  inveterate  gabbler  who  can  not  hold 
his  tongue. 

In  this  connection  he  relates  the  following  anecdote 
on  the  authority  of  Jules  Eichard:  In  1857  this  gentle- 
man had  occasion  to  visit  a  sick  friend  in  a  hospital, 
where  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  an  old  official  of  the 
institution  from  the  south  of  France,  who  was  exceed- 
ingly fond  of  animals,  his  love  of  them  being  equalled 
only  by  his  hatred  of  priests;  he  claimed  also  to  be  per- 
fectly familiar  with  the  languages  of  cats  and  dogs,  and 
to  speak  the  language  of  apes  even  better  than  the  apes 
themselves.  Jules  Eichard  received  this  statement 
with  an  incredulous  smile,  whereupon  the  old  man, 
whose  pride  was  evidently  touched  by  such  scepticism, 
invited  him  to  come  the  next  morning  to  the  zoological 
garden.  "  I  met  him  at  the  appointed  time  and  place," 
says  Mr.  Eichard,  "  and  we  went  together  to  the  mon- 
keys' cage,  where  he  leaned  on  the  outer  railing  and 
began  to  utter  a  succession  of  guttural  sounds,  which 
alphabetical  signs  are  scarcely  adequate  to  represent — 
^Kirruu,  kirrikiu,  kuruki,  kirikiu' — repeated  with 
slight  variations  and  differences  of  accentuation.  In  a 
few  minutes  the  whole  company  of  monkeys,  a  dozen  in 
number,  assembled  and  sat  in  rows  before  him  with  their 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        325 

hands  crossed  in  their  laps  or  resting  on  their  knees, 
laughing,  gesticulating,  and  answering."  The  conver- 
sation continued  for  a  full  quarter  of  an  hour,  to  the  in- 
tense delight  of  the  monkeys,  who  took  a  lively  part  in 
it.  As  their  interlocutor  was  about  to  go  away,  they 
all  became  intensely  excited,  climbing  up  on  the  balus- 
trade and  uttering  cries  of  lamentation;  when  he  finally 
departed  and  disappeared  more  and  more  from  their 
view,  they  ran  up  to  the  top  of  the  cage  and  clinging  to 
the  frieze  made  motions  as  if  they  were  bidding  him 
good-bye.  It  seemed,  adds  Mr.  Eichard,  as  though 
they  wished  to  say,  "  We  are  sorry  to  part  and  hope  to 
meet  again,  and  if  you  can't  come,  do  drop  us  a  line! " 
No  one  who  has  ever  observed  the  actions  and  lis- 
tened to  the  utterances  of  a  clever  parrot  will  accept  Mer- 
senne's  assertion  that  the  exercise  of  the  vocal  organs 
of  animals  is  not  free,  but  subject  to  natuial  and  irre- 
sistible necessity,  or  that  speech  is  in  a  ^:reater  degree 
the  product  of  inevitable  causation  in  the  mouth  of  the 
cockatoo  than  in  that  of  the  cockney.  Humboldt  states 
that  after  the  Aturians  on  the  Orinoco  had  become  ex- 
tinct, the  only  creature  that  could  speak  their  language 
was  a  very  aged  parrot,  condemned  by  adverse  fortune 
to  spend  the  remnant  of  its  days  in  comparative  solitude 
as  the  sad  survivor  of  a  once  powerful  tribe.  From  a 
philological  point  of  view,  the  venerable  bird  was  as  in- 
teresting a  character  as  the  old  Cornish  woman  with 
whose  decease,  some  years  ago,  the  dialect  of  her  people 
ceased  to  be  a  spoken  tongue.  It  is  also  a  historical  fact 
that  when,  in  1509,  the  Spanish  freebooters  Nicuesa  and 
Ojeda  wished  to  surprise  the  village  of  Yurbaco,  on  the 
Isthmus  of  Darien,  in  order  to  capture  a  cargo  of  slaves, 
the  vigilant  parrots  in  the  tops  of  the  trees  announced 


^26  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

the  approach  of  the  enemy,  and  thus  enahled  the  inhab- 
itants to  escape. 

Perhaps  the  most  cultivated  and  certainly  the  most 
celebrated  parrot  of  which  we  have  any  record  belonged 
from  1830  to  1840  to  a  canon  of  the  cathedral  of  Salz- 
burg, named  Hanikl,  who  gave  the  bird  regular  instruc- 
tion twice  a  day,  from  nine  to  ten  in  the  morning  and 
from  ten  to  eleven  in  the  evening.  The  parrot  made 
rapid  progress  in  the  development  of  its  mental  facul- 
ties, and  soon  showed  what  a  remarkable  degree  of  in- 
telligence it  is  possible  for  such  a  creature  to  attain 
under  systematic  tuition.  The  sayings  and  doings  of 
this  parrot  which  lived  fourteen  years  after  Hanikl's 
death  and  died  in  1854,  have  been  reported  by  a  number 
of  careful  and  competent  observers  and  are  unquestion- 
ably authentic.  One  day,  as  some  one  entered  the  room, 
it  cried  out  in  a  harsh  tone,  "  Where  do  you  come  from?  " 
On  seeing  that  the  person  was  an  ecclesiastical  dignitary, 
it  added,  apologetically:  "  Oh,  I  beg  pardon  of  your 
Grace;  I  thought  it  was  a  bird."  It  took  part  in  gen- 
eral conversation,  and  was  sometimes  so  loquacious  that 
it  had  to  be  told  to  stop;  it  was  also  fond  of  talldng  to  it- 
self, and  imagining  all  sorts  of  exciting  scenes:  "  Beat 
me,  will  you?  Beat  me,  will  you?  Oh,  you  rascal! 
Yes,  yes,  that's  the  way  of  the  world."  It  whistled 
tunes  and  sang  various  popular  songs,  and  even  learned 
an  entire  aria  from  Flotow's  opera  of  Martha. 

A  parrot  of  the  same  species  (Psittacus  eritliacus), 
ash-gray,  with  scarlet-red  tail,  is  now  in  the  possession 
of  M.  Nicaise,  a  member  of  the  Anthropological  Society 
of  Paris.  This  bird  is  nearly  fifty  years  of  age,  and  en- 
dowed with  wonderful  versatility  of  intellect.  It 
imitates  to  perfection  all  the  calls  and  cries  of  the  street, 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        327 

and  when  in  1870  it  was  sent  away  from  the  beleaguered 
city  into  the  country,  it  came  back  with  its  repertory  im- 
mensely enlarged,  having  learned  to  reproduce  the 
whistle  of  the  quail,  the  hoot  of  the  owl,  the  merry 
scream  of  the  magpie,  the  crow  of  the  cock,  the  cluck  of 
the  hen,  and  the  tones  of  a  great  variety  of  wild  birds 
and  domestic  fowls  and  quadrupeds.  One  of  its  histri- 
onic masterpieces  is  the  phonetic  representation  of  the 
killing  of  a  pig  which  it  witnessed  nearly  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago,  but  of  which  it  has  not  forgotten  a  single 
characteristic  grunt  or  squeal.  Nothing  is  omitted, 
from  the  deep  gutturals,  alternating  with  piercing 
shrieks,  as  the  porker  is  dragged  to  the  place  of  slaughter, 
to  the  last  faint  groan  of  the  dying  animal.  Indeed, 
the  reproduction  of  the  scene  is  so  intolerably  realistic, 
that  the  persons  present  are  fain  to  stop  their  ears  and  to 
bid  the  bird  keep  silence.  It  listens  attentively  to  any 
conversation  that  is  going  on,  and  expressc  s  its  approval 
or  astonishment  by  exclaiming  "  Oh! "  or  "  Ah!  "  and 
always  at  the  appropriate  time  or  place.  If  any  one  tells 
a  funny  story  or  gets  off  a  joke,  it  laughs  with  the  rest  of 
the  company,  although  this  outburst  of  merriment  is 
doubtless  due,  not  so  much  to  a  humorous  appreciation 
of  what  is  said,  as  to  the  contagion  of  the  general  hilarity. 
When  it  wants  something,  it  calls  its  mistress  by  her 
Christian  name,  Marie,  and,  if  she  does  not  come  at  once, 
calls  her  again  with  a  sharp  tone  of  impatience.  Once, 
when  a  firebrand  fell  on  the  hearth  and  filled  the  room 
with  smoke,  it  cried,  "Marie!  Marie!"  in  a  voice  in- 
dicating extreme  anxiety  and  alarm.  This  parrot  is  a 
provident  creature,  and  when  taking  its  dinner  always 
lays  aside  a  piece  of  bread  and  jam  for  its  supper,  thus 
showing  that  it  has  the  power  of  looking  before  and  after. 


ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

which  Shakespeare  deems  a  peculiarly  human  attribute. 
It  not  only  sings  songs  correctly,  but  also  improvises 
musical  compositions,  which  it  renders  each  time  with 
new  variations,  and  performs,  as  M.  Mcaise  assures  us, 
"  with  a  taste  and  style  and  spirit  that  might  excite  the 
envy  of  any  pupil  of  the  conservatory."  The  fact  that 
these  pieces  invariably  close  on  the  tonic  or  keynote 
proves  that  all  the  modulations  are  referred  to  the  fun- 
damental tone  of  the  chord,  and  gives  evidence  of  a 
musical  feeling  and  sense  of  harmony  such  as  only  hu- 
man beings  are  usually  supposed  to  possess.  These  im- 
provisations are  whistled,  and  sound  as  though  they  were 
played  by  a  flute,  the  performance  being  uniformly 
preluded  with  runs  and  trills  and  other  vocalizations. 

The  parrot  is  an  exception  to  the  rule  that  the  period 
of  infancy  is  longest  in  the  most  intelligent  creatures. 
Its  babyhood  is,  in  fact,  very  short,  although  its  average 
life  seems  to  be  somewhat  longer  than  that  of  a  man.  It 
attains  the  full  splendour  of  its  plumage  and  is  pubes- 
cent at  the  early  age  of  two,  and  often  survives  all  the 
members  of  the  human  family  in  which  it  has  been 
reared,  outliving  even  the  children  much  younger  than 
itself.  During  all  this  time  it  retains  its  mental  plas- 
ticity and  progressiveness,  never  ceases  to  learn,  and  goes 
on  developing  its  inborn  capacities  from  the  beginning  to 
the  end  of  its  prolonged  existence.  It  is  quite  as  in- 
quisitive as  the  monkey,  and  quite  as  capable  of  close  and 
continued  observation.  Merely  through  its  association 
with  man  it  is  constantly  making  new  acquisitions  of 
knowledge,  and  there  is  no  telling  what  might  not  be  ac- 
complished in  this  direction  by  systematic  instruction 
carried  on  through  successive  generations. 

If  Mr.  Garner's  object  had  been  to  ascertain  how  far 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        329 

animals  can  acquire  the  use  of  human  speech  and  what 
effect  such  discipline  would  have  in  enlarging  their  in- 
tellectual faculties,  he  would  have  done  better  to  choose 
parrots  instead  of  monkeys  for  his  experiments;  but 
as  his  purpose  is  to  learn  the  language  of  animals,  and  not 
to  teach  them  his  own,  he  has  done  well  to  select  apes 
as  the  objects  of  his  study.  It  must  be  confessed,  how- 
ever, that  the  results  of  his  investigations,  embodied  in 
his  volume  recently  published,  are  rather  disappointing, 
and  are,  in  fact,  less  comprehensive,  although  doubtless 
more  accurate,  than  the  observations  made  by  Wenzel  at 
the  beginning  of  the  present  century.  He  is  prone  to 
lay  great  stress  upon  matters  that  are  really  of  no  im- 
portance whatever,  as,  for  example,  when  he  discovers 
that  "  No  "  accompanied  by  a  shake  of  the  head  is  the 
sign  of  negation,  and  adds,  "  The  fact  that  this  sign  is 
common  to  both  man  and  simian  I  regard  as  more  than 
a  mere  coincidence,  and  I  believe  that  in  tlds  sign  I  have 
found  the  psycho-physical  basis  of  expression."  It  is 
difficult  to  perceive  how  a  logical  thinker  could  draw 
such  a  sweeping  conclusion  from  so  slight  premises.  If 
he  finds  that  gorillas  and  chimpanzees  in  their  native 
wilds,  unaffected  by  human  associations,  express  dissent 
by  shaking  their  heads  and  shouting  "  No!  "  it  will  be  a 
fact  well  worth  recording. 

Mr.  Garner's  superiority  to  his  predecessors  in  this 
department  of  linguistic  research  consists  in  the  greater 
excellence  of  his  material  rather  than  of  his  mental 
equipment.  The  possession  of  the  phonograph  alone 
gives  him  an  immense  advantage  in  this  respect,  by  en- 
abling him  to  record  and  to  repeat  the  utterances  of 
monkeys  with  perfect  accuracy.  Armed  with  this 
scientific  weapon  of  phonetic  precision  and  all  the  instru- 


330  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

ments  and  appliances  which  modern  invention  has  placed 
at  his  disposal,  he  may  perhaps  completely  conquer  a 
province  of  investigation  hitherto  but  partially  explored, 
and,  by  making  important  contributions  to  zooglottology 
and  working  out  a  system  of  alphabetical  signs  for  the 
language  of  the  anthropoid  race,  become  the  Cadmus 
of  the  simian  world.* 


*  According  to  the  latest  reports,  Mr.  Garner  has  returned 
from  his  expedition  without  having  realized  the  exalted  hopes  ex- 
cited by  his  elaborate  preparations  and  the  somewhat  sensational 
announcement  of  his  programme,  published  on  the  eve  of  his  de- 
parture in  The  North  American  Review.  In  an  address  delivered 
before  the  Societe  de  Geoi^raphie  in  Paris,  on  May  4,  1894,  the 
African  explorer  Dybowski  took  occasion  to  refer  to  iMr.  Garner's 
sojourn  in  the  jungles  of  the  Congo  for  the  purpose  of  learning 
the  language  of  the  gorillas  from  their  own  lips.  Dybowski 
stated  that  he  himself  had  passed  two  days  at  the  mission  of  Fer- 
nand  Vaz,  situated  on  the  shore  of  the  lake  bearing  the  same 
name.  The  superior.  Father  Biehet,  informed  him  that  Mr.  Gar- 
ner had  spent  three  months  there — not  in  the  depth  of  the  forest, 
but  at  the  mission  itself — evidently  preferring  the  society  of  the 
monks  to  that  of  the  monkeys.  Mr.  Garner  brought  with  him  his 
famous  cage  "of  steel  wire  woven  into  a  diamond-shaped  lattice," 
and  set  it  up  at  a  place  called  Fort  Gorillas,  on  the  edge  of  the 
forest,  just  twenty-eiglit  minutes'  walk  from  the  mission  and  within 
hearing  of  the  church  bells.  Dybowski  expresses  a  doubt  whether 
**  tlie  apes,  however  strong  their  instincts  of  civilization,  ever  came 
so  near  the  convent  to  perform  their  religious  devotions."  The 
negro  boy  Rozounge,  a  youth  about  tliirteen  or  fourteen  years  of 
age,  who  speaks  French  very  well  and  accompanied  Mr.  Garner  on 
his  excursion's,  confirmed  the  statements  of  Father  Biehet,  and 
added  that  Mr.  Garner  had  slept  three  nights  in  the  cage,  where 
he  awaited  in  vain  the  visits  of  the  chimpanzees  and  gorillas.  The 
boy  thinks  they  heard  them  one  evening,  and  that  is  the  extent  of 
Mr.  Garner's  intercourse  with  these  great  anthropoid  apes  in  their 
wild  state.  lie  succeeded,  however,  in  buying  a  young  chimpan- 
zee, which  he  named  Moses,  but  which  soon  died.    He  af  terwai'd 


BARRIER  BETWEEN  MAN  AND  BEAST.        331 

expended  sixteen  dollars  in  the  purchase  of  a  young  gorilla,  which 
survived  only  a  few  days.  He  then  left  the  mission,  where  he  had 
paid  five  francs  a  day  for  board  and  lodging,  and  set  out  with 
Father  Buleon,  of  the  Congregation  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  on  a  tour 
to  the  Eschiras,  a  tribe  of  the  interior.  After  two  days'  travel  he 
was  taken  with  a  severe  pain  in  his  legs,  and  had  to  be  borne  in  a 
hammock  to  the  Tomlinson  factory,  where  he  remained  two 
months.  On  recovery  he  embarked  for  Europe,  taking  with  him 
his  cage  and  the  elements  of  his  dictionary  of  the  simian  tongue. 
Dybowski  says  that  the  phonograph  which  was  to  catch  the 
sounds  uttered  by  the  apes  and  to  record  them  on  a  cylinder  never 
arrived,  so  that  Mr.  Garner  had  to  carry  on  his  investigations 
without  the  aid  of  this  instrument.  Dybowski's  remarks  on  this 
subject  were  reported  in  the  Paris  Figaro,  and  have  been  published 
in  other  papers — e.  g.,  in  The  Nation,  June  14, 1894.  The  French 
journal  characterizes  Mr.  Garner  as  an  amateur  in  linguistics,  who 
has  succeeded  in  having  himself  taken  seriously,  but  who  proves 
to  be  "  un  simple  fumisie.^^  It  is  hardly  possible  that  these  state- 
ments should  have  escaped  Mr.  Garner's  notice,  and  the  fact  that 
he  has  made  no  reply  to  them  is  a  tacit  admission  of  their  correct- 
ness. This  utter  failure  to  accomplish  what  he  set  out  to  do  is 
greatly  to  be  regretted,  inasmuch  as  the  line  of  h  s  researches  was 
in  the  right  direction,  although  they  might  have  been  more  suc- 
cessfully pursued  in  a  zoological  garden  than  in  the  wilds  of  Africa 
or  at  a  missionary  station  on  Lake  Fernand  Vaz. 

Those  who  may  have  condemned  Dybowski's  strictures  as  too 
severe  will  find  them  fully  justified  by  Mr.  Garner's  own  relation 
of  his  experiences  and  obseivati ons  recorded  in  his  recently  pub- 
lished volume  Gorillas  and  Chimpanzees.  The  only  original  dis- 
covery he  seems  to  have  made  is  that  of  the  armadillo,  hitherto 
supposed  to  be  peculiar  to  South  America.  We  venture  to  assert 
that  the  one  he  saw  will  probably  prove  to  be  the  sole  specimen  of 
the  Dasypus  sexcinatus  existing  in  tropical  Africa.  His  work 
does  not  contain  a  single  noteworthy  contribution  to  simian 
speech.  Indeed,  it  is  difficult  to  determine  the  exact  field  of  his 
labours  by  consulting  any  map  of  the  country,  and  the  fact  that 
letters  were  delivered  to  him  in  his  cage  would  imply  that  the 
postman  was  abroad,  and  indicate  that  his  camp  was  not  far  from 
the  outskirts  of  civilization. 

In  &  communication  to  an  English  paper  on  his  return  from 
22 


332  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Africa  Mr.  Garner  speaks  of  conferences  with  gorillas,  and  adds : 
"  My  preliminary  understanding  of  the  sounds  uttered  by  my 
anthropoid  visitors  was  that  their  government  is  strictly  patri- 
archal and  that  they  have  some  fixed  idea  of  order  and  justice." 
This  theory  of  the  organization  of  the  simian  horde  is  not  new, 
but  it  is  the  first  time  that  positive  information  on  the  subject  has 
been  received  directly  from  the  mouths  of  the  Simia  themselves. 
The  gorillas  must  have  been  in  a  very  confiding  mood,  or  they 
would  not  have  imparted  this  knowledge  to  a  perfect  stranger. 
Perhaps  their  communicativeness  was  the  result  of  hypnotic  sug- 
gestion, for  in  a  letter  published  in  an  Australian  journal,  the 
Sydney  Daily  News,  Mr.  Garner  states  that  on  one  occasion  he 
placed  his  battery  with  a  phonograph  and  a  revolving  mirror  in  a 
banyan  grove  and  concealed  himself  about  sixty  metres  distant. 
A  crowd  of  chattering  monkeys  soon  gathered  round  the  glittering 
mirror.  Mr.  Garner  observed  them  for  more  than  an  hour  and 
then  emerging  from  his  hiding  place  cautiously  approached.  No 
sooner  did  they  see  him  than  they  all  disappeared  as  by  magic 
with  the  exception  of  one  chimpanzee,  which  stood  perfectly 
still,  staring  at  the  mirror,  while  a  slight  tremor  ran  through  its 
limbs  and  its  ears  gave  a  convulsive  twitch.  "  I  could  hardly  be- 
lieve my  eyes ;  the  monkey  was  hypnotized."  As  the  chimpanzee 
kept  saying  "  achru"  which  means  sun  in  the  anthropoid  tongue, 
one  might  suggest  that  this  animal  was  a  sun-worshipper  in  an 
ecstasy  of  devotion  at  the  supposed  descent  of  its  god  to  the  earth. 
There  is  no  limit  to  hypotheses  in  such  cases.  Mr.  Garner's  men- 
tion of  the  phonograph  can  be  reconciled  with  the  positive  state- 
ments of  Dybowski  and  the  French  missionaries  only  by  assuming 
that  this  apparatus  arrived  after  he  left  Fernand  Vaz. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE    ESTHETIC    SENSE    AND    EELIGIOUS    SENTIMENT    IN 
ANIMALS. 

The  assthetic  sense  as  a  distinction  between  man  brute.  Man's  ar- 
tistic faculty  the  mark  of  his  pre-eminence  according  to  Wilks, 
Huxley,  Prantl,  and  Schiller.  Herbart  recognises  no  such  line 
of  separation.  The  influence  of  infancy.  Value  of  flexible 
organs  of  prehension.  Appreciation  of  the  beautiful  shown  by 
birds.  Fondness  of  finery.  Decorative  taste  of  the  bower 
bird.  Nests  of  the  weaver,  oriole,  titmouse,  and  japu.  Love 
of  music  in  birds  and  insects.  Musical  train  ing  of  unmusical 
birds.  Beethoven  and  the  spider.  The  cicada  as  a  violinist. 
Musical  performances  of  apes  in  their  native  wilds.  Exhibi- 
tion of  musical  preferences  by  dogs.  Musical  concerts  by 
mammals  and  birds.  Hudson's  observations  in  La  Plata. 
Propagation  of  plants  dependent  upon  a  sense  of  colour  in  in- 
sects. Religious  sentiment  of  animals  recognised  by  De  Qua- 
trefages  and  Darwin.  Fetichistic  conceptions  formed  by  the 
higher  animals.  Striking  examples  given  by  Herbert  Spencer 
and  Romanes.  Sense  of  the  supernatural  in  horses  and  dogs. 
A  haunted  canary  cage.  Second  sight  and  ghost-seeing  at- 
tributed by  popular  belief  to  dogs,  horses,  and  storks.  Reli- 
gion as  a  natural  growth  has  its  roots  in  animal  intelligence. 

Dr.  Wilks  reduces  the  chief  difference  between  man 
and  brute  to  the  "  smallness  of  knowledge  of  the  fine  arts 
possessed  by  the  latter  ";  and  a  passing  remark  made  by 
Prof.  Huxley,  in  one  of  his  essays,  would  seem  to  imply  a 
disposition  to  draw  the  line  of  separation  between  animal 

333 


334  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

and  human  intelligence  at  this  point.  Prantl  regards 
the  phrase  "  die  Kunsttriebe  der  Thiere  '^  as  a  metaphor- 
ical expression  involving  a  confusion  of  terms,  since  ani- 
mals, with  all  their  apparent  artistic  ability  and  taste 
shown  in  constructing  and  decorating  their  habitations, 
do  not  seek  to  embody  ideas  in  material  forms — an  as- 
sumption which  begs  the  very  question  in  dispute. 
Schiller,  in  his  well-known  poem,  Die  Kiinstler,  makes 
man's  pre-eminence  consist  solely  in  his  artistic  faculty: 

In  Fleiss  kann  dich  die  Biene  meistem, 

In  der  Geschickllchkeit  ein  Wurm  dein  Lehrer  sein, 

Dein  Wissen  theilest  du  mit  vorgezogenen  Geistern, 
Die  Kunst,  o  Mensch,  hast  du  allein. 

In  diligence  the  bee  can  master  thee, 
In  skilfulness  a  worm  thy  teacher  be, 
Knowledge  thou  dost  with  higher  spirits  own, 
But  art,  O  man,  thou  dost  possess  alone. 

Herbart,  as  we  have  already  seen,  does  not  recognise 
this  demarcation.  "  If  one  asks  for  a  specific  character- 
istic of  mankind,  which  is  not  physical,  but  spiritual, 
original  and  universal,  and  does  not  resolve  itself 
into  a  more  or  less,  I  confess,"  he  says,  "  that  I  do  not 
know  of  any  such  distinction  and  do  not  think  it  exists." 
He  then  enumerates  the  advantages  possessed  by  man — 
namely,  hands,  speech,  and  a  long  and  helpless  infancy, 
to  the  use  and  influence  of  which  are  due  the  extraor- 
dinary growth  of  the  human  brain  in  size  and  complexity 
and  the  corresponding  development  of  intellectual  power. 
In  the  acuteness  of  his  senses  and  in  many  peculiarities 
of  physical  structure  man  is  inferior  to  some  of  the  lower 
animals.  He  has  not,  says  Prof.  Cope,  kept  pace  with 
other  mammals  in  the  development  of  his  teeth,  which 


THE  ESTHETIC  SENSE.  335 

are  "  thoroughly  primitive  "  ;  his  nose  is  less  service- 
able than  that  of  the  dog;  the  eagle  has  a  far  better  eye; 
the  ankle  joint  of  the  sheep  is,  as  a  piece  of  mechanism, 
stronger  and  less  liable  to  derangement  than  the  corre- 
sponding joint  in  man;  the  horse's  foot  consists  of  a 
single  compact  elastic  toe,  on  which  the  animal  runs 
while  its  heel  is  carried  in  the  air  and  never  touches  the 
ground,  thus  attaining  a  springiness  and  swiftness  of 
motion  beyond  the  reach  of  the  human  plantigrade. 
Whatever  lightness  and  elasticity  of  step  man  possesses 
is  due  less  to  the  perfection  of  his  bodily  organism  than 
to  the  uplifting  influence  of  his  intellect.  With  the 
decay  of  his  mental  powers  Homo  sapiens  slouches  like 
a  bear,  as  may  be  observed  in  the  ungainly  and  unsteady 
gait  of  cretins  and  idiots,  however  vigorous  they  may  be 
physically. 

The  objection  urged  by  Prof.  Kedny  against  the  doc- 
trine of  evolution — namely,  that  man's  h^^lpless  infancy 
proves  him  to  be  different  in  kind  from  other  animals — 
ignores  the  fact  that  the  soko  and  many  other  species  of 
the  genus  Simia  pass  through  a  period  of  infant  help- 
lessness almost  as  long  as  that  of  some  savage  tribes.  The 
babyhood  of  the  anthropoid  apes  is  much  longer  and 
more  helpless  than  that  of  the  cynopithecoids,  the  platy- 
rhines,  or  the  lemurs;  and  the  higher  the  order  of  the 
monkeys,  the  more  they  resemble  man  in  this  respect. 
Mr.  Wallace  captured  a  young  orang-outang,  which  had 
to  be  fed  and  cared  for  like  a  human  infant,  lay  rolling 
on  the  ground  with  all  fours  in  the  air,  and  could  hardly 
walk  when  it  was  three  months  old;  whereas  a  macacus 
of  the  same  age  seemed  to  have  already  acquired  full  use 
of  its  limbs  and  mental  faculties.  The  long  duration  of 
this  complete  dependence  on  parental  care  in  the  case  of 


336  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

the  human  infant,  so  far  from  disproving  the  doctrine  of 
evolution,  furnishes  one  of  the  strongest  arguments  in 
its  favour,  since  it  helps  to  explain  how  man  gradually 
attained  his  intellectual  primacy  among  the  primates. 
The  American  platyrhines,  marmosets,  and  other  smaller 
long-tailed  monkeys  reach  maturity  in  three  or  four 
years,  whereas  the  African  dog-headed  apes  require  ten 
or  twelve  years  for  their  full  development,  and  with  the 
larger  anthropoids  this  period  of  growth  is  nearly  as  long 
as  with  human  beings. 

The  fact  that  quadrumans  have  flexible  organs  of 
prehension,  can  grasp  and  handle  things  and  imitate 
human  actions,  gives  them  a  great  advantage  over  quad- 
rupeds. A  dog  may  be  as  intelligent  as  a  chimpanzee, 
but  he  is  unable  to  "  show  oif  "  as  well;  he  can  not  un- 
tie knots  with  his  paws,  nor  put  on  clothes,  nor  eat  with 
knife  and  fork,  nor  uncork  bottles,  nor  drink  wine  by 
lifting  the  glass  to  his  lips,  nor  use  a  toothpick,  nor  per- 
form a  variety  of  tricks  which  make  the  monkey  appear 
to  be  relatively  far  more  richly  endowed  with  mental 
gifts  than  is  actually  the  case,  and  throw  into  the  shade 
the  most  conspicuous  exploits  of  the  poodle  and  the 
collie. 

Neverth-eless,  this  manual  and  digital  dexterity  can 
scarcely  be  overestimated  as  a  means  of  disciplining  the 
mind  and  increasing  the  volume  of  the  brain;  and  if 
chimpanzees,  orang-outangs,  and  sokes  had  enjoyed  the 
thousands  of  years  of  domestication  and  thorough  breed- 
ing and  training,  from  which  dogs  have  so  immensely 
profited,  there  is  no  knowing  what  advances  in  knowl- 
edge and  acquisitions  of  intellectual  culture  they  might 
not  have  made.  It  is  wonderful  how  much  they  learn 
through  observation  and  very  slight  instruction  during 


THE  JSSTHETIC  SENSE.  337 

a  few  months'  intercourse  with  human  beings,  discharg- 
ing with  evid3nt  pleasure  the  duties  of  body  servant  or 
waiter,  answering  the  door  bell,  showing  visitors  into 
the  parlour,  fetching  water,  kindling  the  fire,  washing 
dishes,  turning  the  spit,  and  doing  all  sort  of  chores  in 
and  about  the  house.  "  Such  an  ape,^'  says  Brehm,  "  one 
can  not  treat  as  a  beast,  but  must  associate  with  as  a  man. 
Notwithstanding  all  the  peculiarities  it  exhibits,  it  re- 
veals in  its  nature  and  conduct  so  very  much  that  is  hu- 
man, that  one  quite  forgets  the  animal.  Its  body  is  that 
of  a  brute,  but  its  intelligence  is  almost  on  a  level  with 
that  of  a  common  boor.  It  is  absurd  to  attribute  the 
actions  of  such  a  creature  to  unthinking  imitation;  it 
imitates  to  be  sure,  but  as  a  child  imitates  an  adult,  with 
understanding  and  judgment." 

That  the  plastic  and  progressive  period  of  the  mon- 
key's individual  development  is  short,  and  that  its  facul- 
ties become  set  and  stationary  at  a  comparatively  early 
age,  is  undeniable;  but  the  same  holds  true  of  the  negro, 
who  loses  his  educability  and  ceases  his  mental  growth 
much  earlier  than  the  Caucasian.  The  longer  or  shorter 
duration  of  this  formative  season  in  the  mental  life  of 
man  is,  to  some  extent,  a  matter  of  race,  but  in  a  still 
greater  degree  the  result  of  civilization. 

The  hand  is  also  a  valuable  instrument  for  the  culti- 
vation of  the  esthetic  sense,  and  the  more  flexible  and 
sensitive  this  instrument  becomes,  the  greater  are  the 
results  achieved  by  it  in  this  direction.  But  there  are 
animals  without  hands  that  show  an  appreciation  of  the 
beautiful.  Mr.  Darwin  has  proved  conclusively  that 
birds  take  pleasure  in  sweet  sounds  and  in  brilliant 
colours,  and  that  the  sentiment  thus  awakened  and  ap- 
pealed to  plays  an  important  part  in  the  preservation 


338  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

and  perfection  of  the  species  through  natural  selection. 
The  struggle  for  existence  is  not  always  carried  on  by 
fierce  combat  and  the  triumph  of  brute  force,  but  quite  as 
frequently  takes  the  form  of  competition  in  beauty,  ad- 
dressing itself  either  to  the  ear  as  alluring  song  or  to  the 
eye  as  attractive  plumage;  and  the  bird  that  possesses 
these  characteristics  in  the  highest  degree  carries  off  tiie 
prize  in  the  tournament  of  love,  and  propagates  its  kind. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  birds  take  delight  in  the  gor- 
geousness  of  their  own  feathers,  and  the  more  brilliant 
their  hues  the  greater  the  vanity  they  display.  Con- 
spicuous examples  of  this  love  of  admiration  and  fond- 
ness of  parading  their  finery  are  the  peacock  and  the 
bird  of  paradise. 

The  decoration  of  its  boudoir  by  the  bower  bird,  as 
described  by  Mr.  Gould  in  his  History  of  the  Birds  of 
New  South  Wales,  indicates  a  decided  and  discrimina- 
tive preference  for  bright  and  variegated  objects,  and 
evinces  no  small  amount  of  aesthetic  feeling  and  artistic 
taste  in  selecting  and  arranging  them.  The  bower  is  built 
of  sticks  and  slender  twigs  gracefully  interwoven,  so 
that  the  tapering  points  meet  at  the  top,  and  is  adorned 
with  the  rose-coloured  tail  feathers  of  the  inca  cockatoo 
and  the  gay  plumes  of  other  parrots,  tinted  shells, 
bleached  bones,  rags  of  divers  hues,  and  whatever  gaudy 
or  glittering  trinkets  may  please  the  bird^s  fancy.  Some- 
times the  space  in  front  of  the  bower  is  covered  with 
half  a  bushel  of  things  of  this  sort,  laid  out  like  a  par- 
terre with  winding  walks,  in  which  the  happy  possessor 
of  the  garnered  treasures  struts  about  with  the  pride  and 
pleasure  of  a  connoisseur  in  a  gallery  of  paintings,  or  a 
bibliophile  who  has  his  shelves  filled  with  incunabula  and 
other  rare   editions.     These   objects  have  often  been 


THE  ESTHETIC  SENSE.  339 

brought  from  a  great  distance,  and  are  of  no  possible 
use  to  the  bird  except  as  they  gratify  its  love  of  the 
beautiful  and  appeal  to  what  we  call  in  man  the  aesthetic 
sense.  Its  conduct  can  be  explained  in  no  other  way; 
for  the  bower  is  not  a  nest  in  which  eggs  are  laid  and 
hatched  and  young  ones  reared;  it  is  a  salon  or  place  of 
social  entertainment,  and  thus  serves  a  distinctly  ideal 
purpose. 

A  similar  artistic  talent  is  shown  by  the  African  and 
Asiatic  varieties  of  weaver,  which  suspend  their  nests 
from  the  slender  branches  of  trees  over  running  water 
and  thus  render  them  inaccessible  to  monkeys  and  other 
plundering  foes;  sometimes,  too,  they  weave  into  them 
long  thorns  with  the  points  turned  outwards,  so  that  their 
house  becomes  a  castle  and  resembles  a  fortress  bristling 
with  bayonets.  It  is  also  a  significant  fact  that  the  nests 
of  young  birds  are  loosely  and  clumsily  built  and  not 
constructed  to  perfection  until  the  third  year,  proving 
that  their  skill  is  a  gradual  acquirement,  something 
learned,  to  a  certain  extent,  by  practice  and  instruction, 
and  not  purely  instinctive.  Among  Western  repre- 
sentatives of  this  class  of  bird  artists  the  Baltimore  oriole, 
the  European  titmouse  (Parus  penduUnus),  and  the 
Brazilian  japu  are  the  most  noteworthy. 

The  singing  of  birds,  as  a  means  of  sexual  attraction, 
implies  a  certain  appreciation  of  melody.  Indeed,  many 
of  them  do  not  confine  themselves  to  the  songs  of  their 
species,  but  learn  notes  from  other  birds  and  snatches  of 
tunes  from  musical  instruments.  Canaries  can  be  taught 
a  variety  of  airs  by  playing  them  repeatedly  on  a  piano 
or  on  a  hurdy-gurdy.  They  listen  with  attention  and 
imitate  the  strains  which  take  their  fancy.  If  harmony 
or  the  concord  of  sweet  sounds,  as  distinguished  from 


84:0  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

melody  or  the  simple  succession  of  sweet  sounds,  does  not 
enter  into  bird  music,  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  music 
of  primitive  man  and  of  all  early  nations.  Savages,  like 
feathered  songsters,  sing  in  unison,  but  not  in  accord. 

There  are  also  some  remarkable  instances  of  the  mu- 
sical education  of  unmusical  birds,  so  that  they  learn  songs 
wholly  foreign  to  their  species.  A  recent  case  of  this 
kind  occurred  at  the  little  town  of  Tannendorf,  in  the 
principality  of  Eeuss,  in  Germany.  It  is  well  known 
that  the  sparrow  has  naturally  no  gift  of  song,  but  keeps 
up  a  tedious  and  often  intolerable  chirping;  at  the  same 
time  it  is  by  no  means  a  stupid  bird.  An  invalid  soldier 
of  Tannendorf,  named  Pfeifer,  succeeded  in  training 
one  of  these  birds  into  a  very  superior  songster,  which 
took  the  first  prize  for  its  vocal  powers  at  the  ex- 
hibition of  the  Ornithological  Society  "  Ornis,"  held 
at  Leipsic  in  February,  1896.  Isaak  Walton  says 
the  nightingale  "  breathes  such  sweet,  loud  music  out  of 
her  little  instrumental  throat,  that  it  might  make  man- 
kind to  think  that  miracles  are  not  ceased."  But  the 
miracle  is  still  greater  when  such  "  sweet  descants  "  come 
from  the  throat  of  the  sparrow,  whose  natural  notes  are 
so  shrill  and  monotonous.  This  incident  is  a  striking 
proof  of  the  musical  capabilities  of  the  unmusical  pas- 
serine family,  and  shows  what  wonderful  results  may  be 
attained  by  the  patient  development  of  the  faculties  of 
the  lower  animals.  We  may  add  that  one  of  the  jurors 
who  awarded  the  prize  to  Pfeifer's  sparrow  was  Prof. 
Goring,  of  Gera,  well  known  for  his  scientific  explorations 
in  Brazil. 

Spiders,  locusts,  and  lizards  show  a  decided  love  of 
musical  tones  whether  produced  by  themselves  for  the 
purpose  of  sexual  attraction  or  by  the  human  voice  and 


THE  AESTHETIC  SENSE.  341 

performers  on  instruments.  It  is  related  of  Beethoven 
that  when  in  his  boyhood  he  was  learning  the  violin  in 
his  room,  a  spider  used  to  let  itself  down  from  the  ceil- 
ing on  the  instrument  and  remain  there  so  long  as  he 
kept  on  playing.  One  day  his  mother  entered  the  room 
and  seeing  the  spider  in  its  accustomed  place  obeyed  the 
instincts  of  a  careful  housewife  and  killed  it,  whereupon 
the  youthful  Ludwig,  angry  at  this  brutal  treatment  of 
his  silent  and  attentive  auditor,  flung  his  fiddle  on  the 
floor  and  smashed  it.  Beethoven  was  once  questioned 
as  to  the  truth  of  this  statement  and  declared  that  he 
had  no  recollection  of  any  such  incident,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, had  good  reason  to  believe  that  every  living  crea- 
ture, including  flies  and  spiders,  would  have  got  as  far 
as  possible  away  from  his  horrid  gratings  on  the  catgut. 
The  tale  in  this  case  may  be  a  fiction,  but  authentic  in- 
stances of  this  kind  have  occurred  and  been  recorded  by 
musicians. 

It  is  possible,  however,  that  the  apparent  fondness  of 
spiders  for  music  and  their  supposed  partiality  for  the 
tones  of  stringed  instruments  may  be  due  to  the  resem- 
blance of  such  noises  to  the  buzzing  of  flies  when  caught 
in  a  web.  This  explanation,  if  it  be  correct,  would  throw 
a  blur  upon  the  evidence  adduced  in  proof  of  the  sesthetic 
endowments  of  the  Arachnida,  and  show  that  they  are 
"  not  moved  with  concord  of  sweet  sounds,"  but  rather 
by  their  eagerness  for  prey,  and  are  therefore  "flt  for 
treason,  stratagems,  and  spoils."  Thus,  for  example, 
during  a  concert  in  the  celebrated  Gewandhaus  at  Leip- 
sic,  Prof.  Eeclam  watched  the  movements  of  a  spider, 
which  let  itself  down  from  a  chandelier  when  the  violin 
solos  were  performed,  but  hurried  back  and  disappeared 
as  soon  as  the  full  orchestra  began  to  play.     The  illusion 


342  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

of  the  buzzing  fly  was  suddenly  dissipated  by  the  clangour 
of  trumpets,  the  rattle  of  drums,  the  clash  of  cymbals, 
and  the  deep  notes  of  the  ophicleide  and  trombone. 

It  is  true,  however,  that  certain  species  of  spiders  pro- 
duce musical  tones  and  seem  to  take  pleasure  in  them. 
This  is  the  case  with  the  gigantic  spider  of  Central  Aus- 
tralia, known  to  zoologists  as  Phrictis  crassipes.  Ac- 
cording to  recent  observations  made  by  Prof.  Baldwin 
Spencer,  it  is  from  six  to  seven  centimetres  long  and 
measures  twelve  centimetres  between  the  extremities  of 
its  legs.  By  rubbing  its  feelers  against  a  comblike  set 
of  bristles  on  the  back  part  of  its  body,  it  brings  forth 
sounds  that  in  a  still  night  may  be  heard  for  a  distance 
of  two  or  three  metres. 

In  some  charming  verses  entitled  The  Lark  (Die 
Lerche)  a  Westphalian  poetess,  Annette  von  Droste- 
Hiilfshoff,  gives  a  vivid  description  of  a  spring  morning 
on  a  North  German  heath  and  the  orchestral  perform- 
ance, in  which  the  cricket  plays  the  kit,  the  beetle  the 
horn,  the  gnat  the  triangle,  and  the  bumblebee  the 
bass  viol: 

So  tausendstimmig  stieg  noch  nie  ein  Chor, 
Wie's  musicirt  aus  grunem  Held  hervor. 

The  Greeks  ascribed  to  the  cicada  (Terrt^)  a  beauti- 
ful voice  ((jioivq),  which  seems  to  have  been  to  their 
ear  the  synonym  and  supreme  ideal  of  melodiousness. 
Plato  calls  this  insect  the  prophet  of  the  Muses,  and 
Anacreon  extols  it  as  the  divinest  of  singers.  Only  the 
males  were  supposed  to  be  endowed  with  this  fine  vocal 
gift,  hence  the  witty  suggestion  of  Xenarchos  that  men 
might  well  envy  the  happiness  of  the  Cicadae,  whose  fe- 
males are  dumb  (<ov  rats  ywai^v  ovB^  otlovv  <l>o}vrj<s  «/i).    As 


THE  ESTHETIC  SENSE.  343 

a  matter  of  fact,  the  cicada  has  no  voice  at  all,  but  is 
a  superior  violinist,  and  always  carries  with  him  his 
fiddle  organically  attached  to  his  person.  The  recent 
investigations  of  the  entomologists  Vitus  Graber  and 
Brunner  von  Wattenwyl  have  first  given  a  clear  idea 
of  the  construction  of  this  musical  apparatus  and  the 
manner  of  its  use.  The  arrangement  and  the  mode 
of  operation  differ  somewhat  in  different  species.  Per- 
haps the  purest  violin  tones  are  produced  by  the  Lo- 
custa  cantans,  popularly  known  in  some  parts  of  Europe 
as  the  "harvest  bird.^'  The  male  is  an  unwearied 
wielder  of  the  fiddle  stick,  and  the  female  will  listen  for 
hours  with  evident  rapture  to  his  performances.  She, 
too,  possesses  rudimentary  organs  of  the  same  kind,  but 
they  are  visible  only  under  the  microscope  and  not  suffi- 
ciently developed  to  produce  tones.  Clearly  her  musical 
education  has  been  neglected  and  she  has  not  made  the 
most  of  the  gifts  with  which  Nature  ha^  endowed  her; 
but  as  a  good  listener  she  is  unrivalled,  and  finds  ample 
opportunity  to  cultivate  this  rare  and  amiable  talent. 

Not  only  do  some  species  of  monkeys,  like  the  chim- 
panzees and  sokos,  get  up  concerts  of  their  own  in  the 
depths  of  the  forest,  but  dogs,  which  are  generally  sup- 
posed to  be  decidedly  unmusical,  also  discriminate  be- 
tween tunes  and  express  their  preferences  or  aversions 
in  an  unmistakable  manner.  A  friend  of  mine,  who 
had  a  magnificent  St.  Bernard  dog,  was  fond  of  playing 
the  violoncello.  The  dog  used  to  lie  quietly  in  the  room 
with  closed  eyes,  and  appeared  to  pay  no  attention  to 
the  music  until  his  master  struck  up  a  certain  tune, 
when  the  dog  immediately  and  invariably  sat  up  on  his 
haunches  and  began  to  howl.  If  the  tune  which  called 
forth  such  emotions  had  been  written  on  a  very  high 


344  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

key,  or  characterized  by  shrill  tones  or  harsh  dissonances, 
the  conduct  of  the  dog  might  be  easily  explained.  But 
such  was  not  the  case.  There  was  nothing  in  this  piece 
more  than  in  any  other,  so  far  as  any  one  could  observe, 
that  ought  to  grate  the  canine  ear.  Many  incidents  of 
this  kind  might  be  cited  to  prove  that  even  dogs  are  not 
indifferent  to  musical  compositions,  and  show  a  nice  dis- 
crimination between  them,  having  their  likes  and  dis- 
likes, as  well  as  human  beings. 

Indeed,  the  howling  of  a  dog  under  such  circum- 
stances is  no  proof  that  the  sounds  are  painful  to  him;  on 
the  contrary,  it  is  probably  his  manner  of  expressing  his 
appreciation  of  them.  The  noise  he  makes  may  be 
disagreeable  to  us,  just  as  his  sharp  bark  often  is,  but 
this  is  no  reason  why  it  should  not  be  an  utterance  of 
joy.  More  than  half  a  century  ago,  the  zoopsychologist 
Scheitlin  suggested  that  the  dog  takes  pleasure  in  the 
musical  tones,  and  merely  wishes  to  accompany  the  per- 
former. If  they  were  so  discordant  as  to  be  distressful  to 
him,  he  could  leave  the  room;  but  he  has  never  been 
known  to  seek  relief  in  this  manner.  It  is  also  certain 
that  he  imitates  in  some  degree  what  he  hears,  and  that 
the  howls  stimulated  by  the  lengthened  notes  of  the 
organ  differ  from  those  excited  by  the  piano,  the  violin, 
or  the  human  voice.  The  Eev.  A.  Treiber,  a  clergyman 
in  Eichen  near  Eppingen,  Germany,  states  that  when 
a  student  in  the  university  he  had  a  female  poodle  named 
Eolla,  who  was  very  fond  of  singing  with  him.  Thus, 
for  example,  if  he  began  to  sing  the  Lorelei,  especially 
in  falsetto,  Eolla  would  strike  in,  and  one  could  easily 
perceive  how  she  would  try  to  catch  the  tune  by  follow- 
ing, though  not  very  successfully,  the  ascending  and 
descending  notes  of  the  melody.     Still  more  striking 


THE  ESTHETIC  SENSE.  345 

instances  of  this  kind  are  given  by  Alix  (L'Esprit  de  nos 
Betes,  p.  364  sq.),  of  several  poodles  that  sang  the  scale 
perfectly,  and  one  that  "  sang  very  agreeably  a  magnifi- 
cent piece  by  Mozart."  This  remarkable  dog  belonged 
to  Habeneck,  the  director  of  the  Paris  opera,  and  not 
only  had  the  superior  advantage  of  living  in  a  musical 
atmosphere,  but  had  also  received  special  musical  in- 
struction.* ^Ye  know  that  the  imitative  impulse  in 
dogs,  and  more  particularly  in  poodles,  is  very  strong, 
and  there  is  no  reason  why  it  should  not  extend  to  the 
imitation  of  articulate  and  musical  tones,  so  far  as  the 
structure  of  the  vocal  organs  render  their  reproduction 
possible.  That  there  is  also  an  element  of  aesthetic 
gratification  in  such  performances  would  seem  to  be 
evident  from  the  fact  that  some  tones  are  imitated  in 
preference  to  others. 

"  Mammals  and  birds,"  says  a  recent  writer,  "  possess 
the  habit  of  indulging  frequently  in  more  or  less  regular 
or  set  performances,  with  or  without  sound,  or  composed 
exclusively  of  sound;  and  these  performances,  which  in 
many  animals  are  only  discordant  cries  and  choruses, 
and  uncouth,  irregular  motions,  in  the  more  aerial,  grace- 
ful, and  melodious  kinds  taka  immeasurably  higher,  more 
complex,  and  more  beautiful  forms.  .  .  .  We  see  that  the 
inferior  animals,  when  the  conditions  of  life  are  favour- 
able, are  subject  to  periodical  fits  of  gladness,  affecting 
them  powerfully  and  standing  out  in  vivid  contrast  to 
their  ordinary  temper.  And  we  know  what  this  feeling 
is — this  periodic  intense  elation  which  even  civilized 
man  occasionally  experiences  when  in  perfect  health, 
and  more  especially  when  young.     There  are  moments 

*  Cf.  Karl  Groos,  Die  Spiele  der  Thiere,  p.  183. 


346  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

when  he  is  mad  with  joy,  when  he  can  not  keep  still,  when 
his  impulse  is  to  sing  and  shout  aloud  and  laugh  at  noth- 
ing, to  run  and  leap  and  exert  himself  in  some  extrava- 
gant way.  Among  the  heavier  mammalians  the  feeling 
is  manifested  in  loud  noises,  bellowings,  and  screamings, 
and  in  lumbering,  uncouth  motions — throwing  up  of 
heels,  pretended  panics,  and  ponderous  mock  battles.  In 
smaller  and  livelier  animals,  with  greater  celerity  and 
certitude  in  their  motions,  the  feeling  shows  itself  in 
more  regular  and  often  more  complex  ways.  .  .  .  Birds 
are  more  subject  to  this  universal  joyous  instinct  than 
mammals,  and  there  are  times  when  some  species  are  con- 
stantly overflowing  with  it;  and  as  they  are  so  much 
freer  than  mammals,  more  buoyant  and  more  graceful 
in  action,  more  loquacious,  and  have  voices  so  much 
finer,  their  gladness  shows  itself  in  a  greater  variety  of 
ways  with  more  regular  and  beautiful  motions,  and  with 
melody."  *  Here  we  have  very  near  approaches  to  con- 
scious artistic  production.  Indeed,  the  theory  of  the 
derivation  of  the  aesthetic  sentiments  from  the  play  im- 
pulse, enunciated  by  Schiller  more  than  a  century  ago  in 
Ids  Briefe  uber  die  asthetische  Erziehung  des  Menschen, 
and  more  systematically  formulated  by  Herbert  Spencer 
in  his  Principles  of  Psychology,  would  make  these  sen- 
timents common  both  to  men  and  animals.  The  play 
impulse,  like  the  art  impulse,  has  its  source  in  the 
imagination,  and  the  form  in  which  it  finds  expression 
is  determined  chiefly  by  the  force  of  heredity  modified 
by  the  action  of  the  imitative  instinct.  The  kitten,  the 
kid,  the  puppy,  the  young  bird,  and  the  child  has  each 

*  The  Naturalist  in  La  Plata,  by  W.  H.  Hudson,  3d  ed.,  Lon- 
don, 1895,  pp.  264,  280. 


THE  ESTHETIC  SENSE.  347 

its  own  style  of  performance,  which  consists  in  what 
Herbert  Spencer  calls  "  dramatizing  '^  the  serious  and 
habitual  occupations  of  their  parents  and  elders.  The 
young  do  in  fun  the  things  in  which  the  adults  of  their 
kind  are  earnestly  engaged,  and  thus  unconsciously  ex- 
ercise faculties  and  acquire  capabilities  destined  to  be 
of  immense  ulterior  benefit  to  them  in  the  struggle 
for  existence.  This  form  of  diversion,  which  Prof. 
Groos  calls  '^experimenting,"  enters  largely  into  the 
education  of  children,  and  is  the  most  important  factor 
in  kindergarten  instruction,  owing  to  the  long  duration 
of  human  infancy.  With  most  animals  this  sportive 
simulation  begins  very  early,  but  soon  gives  place  to 
serious  activity.  The  kitten  stretches  its  legs,  thrusts 
out  its  claws,  scratches  whatever  comes  in  contact  with 
them,  runs  after  a  rolling  ball,  and,  in  lack  of  other 
objects  of  pursuit,  indulges  the  predatory  instincts  of 
the  feline  race  by  chasing  its  own  tail,  l^he  lowest  or- 
ganisms have  no  leisure  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term; 
all  the  powers  they  possess  are  constantly  and  exclusively 
employed  in  securing  the  bare  necessities  of  life.  As 
we  ascend  to  animals  of  a  higher  type  we  find  them  en- 
dowed with  superior  faculties,  which  enable  them  to 
procure  food  and  shelter,  to  protect  themselves  against 
enemies,  and  to  propagate  their  species,  and  yet  leave 
them  time  and  strength  not  wholly  absorbed  in  making 
provision  for  their  pressing  wants.  This  surplus  of  en- 
ergy finds  its  natural  outlet  in  play,  which,  as  already 
observed,  is  the  resultant  of  hereditary  tendencies  and 
imitative  propensities,  and  marks  the  starting  point 
in  the  cultivation  of  the  ideal.  In  the  above-cited 
work  (p.  227),  Mr.  Hudson  describes  very  vividly 
the  strange  impression  produced  by  large   flocks   of 


348  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

chakars  or  crested  screamers  singing  together  on  the 
pampas  of  South  America.  On  one  occasion  he  saw 
countless  numbers  of  them  gathered  along  the  shores  of 
a  narrow  sheet  of  water  and  arranged  in  several  well-de- 
fined groups  of  about  five  hundred  each  and  extending  all 
round  the  lake.  "Presently  one  flock  near  me  began 
singing  and  continued  their  powerful  chant  for  three  or 
four  minutes;  when  they  ceased,  the  next  flock  took  up 
the  strains,  and  after  it  the  next,  and  so  on  until  the  notes 
of  the  flocks  on  the  opposite  shore  came  floating  strong 
and  clear  across  the  water — then  passed  away,  growing 
fainter  and  fainter,  until  once  more  the  sound  ap- 
proached me  travelling  round  to  my  side  again.  The 
effect  was  very  curious,  and  I  was  astonished  at  the  order- 
ly way  with  which  each  flock  waited  its  turn  to  sing,  in- 
stead of  a  general  outburst  taking  place  after  the  first 
flock  had  given  the  signal."  At  another  time  he  heard  a 
similar  performance  on  a  still  larger  scale.  This  occurred 
at  a  place  called  Gualicho,  on  the  southern  pampas, 
where,  after  riding  over  a  marshy  plain  covered  with  in- 
numerable groups  of  chakars,  he  had  stopped  for  the 
night  at  a  small  rancho  inhabited  by  a  gaucho  and  his 
family.  About  nine  o'clock,  while  they  were  eating 
supper,  the  vast  multitude  of  birds  covering  the  marsh 
for  miles  around  burst  forth  into  a  tremendous  evening 
song,  the  effect  of  which  was  indescribable.  "  One  pecul- 
iarity was  that  in  this  mighty  noise,  which  sounded  louder 
than  the  sea  thundering  on  a  rocky  coast,  I  seemed  to  be 
able  to  distinguish  hundreds,  even  thousands,  of  individ- 
ual voices.  Forgetting  my  supper,  I  sat  motionless  and 
overcome  with  astonishment,  while  the  air  and  even  the 
frail  rancho  seemed  to  be  trembling  in  that  tempest  of 
sound.     When  it  ceased,  my  host  remarked  with  a  smile, 


THE  ESTHETIC  SENSE.  349 

'We  are  accustomed  to  this,  seiior — every  evening  we 
have  this  concert/  It  was  a  concert  well  worth  riding  a 
hundred  miles  to  hear."  It  is  evident  from  the  regular 
occurrence  of  this  performance  and  the  circumstances 
attending  it  that  it  was  merely  a  musical  entertainment, 
having  nothing  more  to  do  with  sexual  solicitation  or  woo- 
ing than  has  an  assembly  of  men  and  women  giving  or 
hearing  a  piece  of  instrumental  or  vocal  music  in  a  thea- 
tre or  a  concert  hall.  It  was  the  expression  and  gratifi- 
cation of  aesthetic  feeling,  having  a  crude  and  inchoate 
artistic  character  like  the  singing  of  savages,  only  more 
melodious.  As  just  stated,  it  is  well  known  that  monkeys, 
and  especially  chimpanzees  and  gorillas,  take  a  childish 
delight  in  making  loud  and  discordant  noises  by  beating 
on  hollow  trees  and  other  resonant  objects,  and  often 
accompanying  this  din  with  shouts  of  exultation,  which 
afford  them  the  same  pleasure  that  it  gives  an  urchin  to 
pound  on  a  tin  pan  or  many  an  adult  to  listt  n  to  the  mo- 
notonous wheezing  of  a  hand-organ.  The  only  differ- 
ence in  these  cases  is  that  the  bird  has  a  finer  musical 
sense  and  a  more  delicate  appreciation  of  the  "  concord 
of  sweet  sounds  "  than  the  simian  or  the  human  creature. 
The  fact,  too,  that  some  birds  sing  less  freely  and  to  our 
ear  at  least  less  charmingly  in  the  pairing  season  than  at 
other  times,  would  imply  the  existence  of  other  and 
stronger  incentives  to  song  than  sexual  attraction,  and 
can  be  best  explained  by  assuming  that  they  find  pleasure 
in  the  mere  act  of  singing  or  in  the  production  of  musical 
tones.  For  this  reason  they  meet  together  and  exercise 
their  voices  in  concert;  this  occurs  also  as  a  general  rule 
out  of  the  pairing  season  and  after  the  young  are  fledged 
and  can  take  part  in  the  performances.  It  has  also  been 
repeatedly  observed  that  the  male  sings  his  most  beauti- 


350  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

f ul  songs  not  as  a  suitor,  but  as  the  prospective  father  of 
a  family,  namely,  while  the  female  is  brooding.  What- 
ever emotion  this  more  elaborate  carol  of  the  bird  may 
express,  whether  paternal  pride  or  conjugal  love,  it  is 
certainly  not  the  strain  in  which  the  feathered  warbler 
woos  his  mate.  Some  species  of  grallatorial  birds, 
such  as  the  New  Caledonian  kagu  {Rhinochitus  juhatus) 
and  the  African  umber  or  shadow-bird  (Scopus  urn- 
bretta),  although  extremely  grave  and  dignified  when 
in  repose,  are  wont  to  work  off  their  surplus  of  vigor 
by  wild  pranks  and  antic  postures.  All  at  once  the 
usually  staid  and  rather  ungainly  fowl  begins  to  dance 
and  skip  about  in  the  liveliest  manner,  seizing  with  its 
long  beak  a  tail  feather  or  the  tip  of  its  wing,  as  a 
ballet-dancer  does  her  gauzy  skirt  with  the  tips  of  her 
fingers,  and  prancing  and  pirouetting  in  a  style  that 
would  do  credit  to  any  Terpsichorean  "  star  "  of  the  oper- 
atic stage.  Sometimes  the  fantastic  performance  ends 
with  a  startling  acrobatic  climax,  the  bird  standing  on  its 
head,  or  rather  on  the  end  of  its  beak,  flapping  its  wings 
and  waving  its  bright-hued  legs  like  flames  in  the  air. 

The  fertilization  and  propagation  of  many  plants 
depend  upon  the  existence  of  a  sense  of  colour  in  insects, 
and  the  exercise  of  choice  in  the  selection  of  flowers. 
This  preference  implies  a  pleasure  in  certain  hues,  and 
consequently  the  possession  of  a  rudimentary  perception 
of  beauty.  Plants  whose  fecundation  depends  upon  the 
action  of  the  wind  do  not  develop  such  a  variety  of 
colours  as  those  in  which  this  depends  upon  the  agency 
of  insects.  Nature  can  trust  her  ill-favoured  daughters 
to  the  wooing  of  the  wind,  but  if  she  wishes  to  attract  a 
nicer  class  of  suitors  she  must  endow  her  children  with 
brilliant  qualities. 


THE  RELIGIOUS  SENTIMENT.  35I 

The  power  of  distinguishing  between  colours  has 
been  denied  not  only  to  the  lower  animals,  but  also  to 
the  lower  races  of  mankind.  But  a  more  extended  and 
accurate  knowledge  shows  that  the  conclusion  is  incorrect 
in  both  cases.  We  know  that  the  American  aborigines 
discriminate  between  the  seven  primary  colours,  and  it 
is  absurd  to  infer  that  this  faculty  was  wanting  to  the 
Homeric  men  merely  because  we  do  not  find  all  these 
colours  mentioned  in  the  Homeric  poems.  It  has  also 
been  asserted  that  the  ancient  Assyrians  could  not  dis- 
tinguish green  from  blue  or  yellow,  because  no  word 
was  found  for  it  in  the  remains  of  their  language.  But 
the  tiles  discovered  at  Nineveh  prove  that  they  had  a 
very  clear  conception  and  aesthetic  appreciation  of  the 
distinction  between  yellow,  green,  and  blue,  and  prob- 
ably did  not  confound  any  colours  of  the  solar  spectrum. 
The  evidence  of  language  on  this  point  is  purely  negative 
and  necessarily  defective. 

Even  the  religious  sentiment,  which  has  been  as- 
sumed to  be  the  peculiar  possession  of  man,  is  fairly  fore- 
shadowed in  the  lower  animals.  The  unanimity  of  opin- 
ion among  those  who  have  made  the  most  careful  study 
of  this  subject,  and  whose  views  are  therefore  entitled  to 
the  greatest  consideration,  is  quite  remarkable.  M.  A. 
de  Quatrefages,  in  his  Eapport  sur  le  Progres  de  I'An- 
thropologie  (Paris,  1867, p.  85),  maintains  that  "  domestic 
animals  are  religious,  since  they  readily  obey  those  who 
appeal  to  them  with  the  rod  or  with  sugar."  In  other 
words,  they  are  amenable  to  rewards  and  punishments, 
doing  the  will  and  seeking  to  win  the  favour  of  superior 
beings,  on  whom  they  are  dependent,  propitiating  and 
fawning  upon  them,  creeping  and  grovelling  on  the 
ground  in  abject  adoration,  in  order  to  assuage  their 


852  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

anger  or  to  secure  their  kind  regard.  "  There  is  no  dif- 
ference/^ adds  the  same  author,  "  between  the  negro 
who  worships  a  dangerous  animal,  and  the  dog  who 
crouches  at  his  master^s  feet  to  obtain  pardon  for  a  fault. 
.  .  .  Animals  fly  to  man  for  protection  as  a  believer 
does  to  his  god.'' 

This  is  precisely  the  feeling  of  the  savage  in  respect 
to  the  superior  skill  and  power  of  the  civilized  man. 
Taguta  Mpini  te  Atua — doctor  all  the  same  as  God — are 
the  words  in  which  the  Morioris,  or  aborigines  of  the 
Chatham  Islands,  expressed  their  sense  of  dependence 
on  a  higher  agency,  whose  beneficent  workings  they  per- 
ceived but  could  not  comprehend.  Among  rude  tribes 
the  sentiment  of  devotion  to  a  chief  does  not  differ  essen- 
tially from  that  of  devotion  to  a  god;  the  Eomans,  at  the 
height  of  their  civilization,  paid  divine  honours  to  their 
emperors;  and  in  modern  monarchies  kings  are  officially 
addressed  in  terms  of  reverential  awe  and  superlative 
adulation  as  all-wise  and  all-powerful  beings,  whose  fa- 
vour one  can  not  sufficiently  implore  with  servile  words 
and  suppliant  knee. 

"  The  feeling  of  religious  devotion,"  says  Darwin, 
"is  a  highly  complex  one,  consisting  of  love,  complete 
submission  to  an  exalted  and  mysterious  superior,  a 
strong  sense  of  dependence,  fear,  reverence,  gratitude, 
hope  for  the  future,  and  perhaps  other  elements.  No 
being  could  experience  so  complex  an  emotion  until  ad- 
vanced in  his  intellectual  and  moral  faculties  to  at  least 
a  moderately  high  level.  Nevertheless,  we  see  some  dis- 
tinct approach  to  this  state  of  mind  in  the  deep  love  of 
a  dog  for  his  master,  associated  with  complete  submis- 
sion, some  fear,  and  perhaps  other  feelings."  * 

*  The  Descent  of  Man.    London,  1874,  p.  95. 


THE  RELIGIOUS  SENTIMENT.  353 

Comte  held  that  the  higher  animals  are  capable  of 
forming  fetichistic  conceptions,  and  of  being  strongly 
influenced  by  them.  Herbert  Spencer  denies  the  truth 
of  this  statement  in  its  absolute  form,  because  it  does  not 
fit  into  his  theory  of  the  origin  and  evolution  of  religious 
ideas,  but  admits,  what  is  essentially  the  same  thing  so 
far  as  the  present  discussion  is  concerned,  that  "  the  be- 
haviour of  intelligent  animals  elucidates  the  genesis  " 
of  fetichism,  and  gives  two  illustrations  of  it.  "  One  of 
these  actions  was  that  of  a  formidable  beast,  half  mas- 
tiff, half  bloodhound,  belonging  to  friends  of  mine. 
While  playing  with  a  walking  stick,  which  had  been 
given  to  him  and  which  he  had  seized  by  the  lower  end,  it 
happened  that  in  his  gambols  he  thrust  the  handle  against 
the  ground,  the  result  being  that  the  end  he  had  in  his 
mouth  was  forced  against  his  palate.  Giving  a  yelp, 
he  dropped  the  stick,  rushed  to  some  distance  from  it, 
and  betrayed  a  consternation  which  wa^  particularly 
laughable  in  so  large  and  ferocious-looking  a  creature. 
Only  after  cautious  approaches  and  much  hesitation  was 
he  induced  again  to  lay  hold  of  the  stick.  This  behav- 
iour showed  very  clearly  that  the  stick,  while  displaying 
none  but  the  properties  he  ^as  familiar  with,  was  not 
regarded  by  him  as  an  active  agent,  but  that  when  it 
suddenly  inflicted  a  pain  in  a  way  never  before  experi- 
enced from  an  inanimate  object,  he  was  led  for  the  mo- 
ment to  class  it  with  animate  objects,  and  to  regard  it  as 
capable  of  again  doing  him  injury.  Similarly,  in  the 
mind  of  the  primitive  man,  knowing  scarcely  more  of 
natural  causation  than  a  dog,  the  anomalous  behaviour 
of  an  object  previously  classed  as  inanimate  suggests 
animation.  The  idea  of  voluntary  action  is  made  nas- 
cent, and  there  arises  a  tendency  to  regard  the  object 


354:  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

with  alarm,  lest  it  should  act  in  some  other  unexpected 
and  perhaps  mischievous  way.  The  vague  notion  of 
animation  thus  aroused  will  obviously  become  a  more 
definite  notion  as  fast  as  the  development  of  the  ghost 
theory  furnishes  a  specific  agency  to  which  the  anoma- 
lous behaviour  can  be  ascribed." 

This  conduct  of  the  dog,  which  every  one  must  have 
observed  under  similar  circumstances,  corresponds  to  that 
of  the  savage  who  worshipped  an  anchor  which  had  been 
cast  ashore,  and  on  which  he  had  hurt  himself  when  he 
first  came  in  contact  with  it.  Superstitious  fear  of  this 
sort  prevails  most  among  men  of  the  lowest  order  of  in- 
telligence, or  in  that  stage  of  society  in  which  human  be- 
ings are  psychically  least  removed  from  beasts.  In  pro- 
portion as  they  rise  in  the  scale  of  existence  and  unfold 
their  mental  faculties,  the  more  they  free  themselves 
from  the  tyranny  of  the  supernatural.  The  terror  of 
the  dog  hurt  by  the  stick  was  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
pain  inflicted,  and  arose  solely  from  the  fact  that  it  was 
produced  by  a  mysterious  cause;  it  was  fear  intensified 
by  the  intervention  of  a  ghostly  element,  and  thus  work- 
ing upon  the  imagination  it  assumed  the  nature  of 
religious  awe.  The  case  is  analogous  to  that  of  a  big, 
burly,  brutal  savage  trembling  before  a  rude  stock  or 
stone,  or  a  Neapolitan  bandit  cowering  before  an 
image  of  the  Virgin  or  kissing  devoutly  the  feet  of  a 
crucifix. 

The  other  illustration  given  by  Herbert  Spencer  is 
that  of  a  retriever,  who,  associating  the  fetching  of  game 
with  the  pleasure  of  the  person  to  whom  she  brought  it, 
would  often  fetch  various  objects  and  lay  them  at  her 
master's  feet;  and  "  this  had  become  in  her  mind  an  act 
of  propitiation." 


THE  RELIGIOUS  SENTIMENT.  355 

Still  more  interesting  and  instructive  are  Mr.  Eo- 
manes's  experiments  with  a  Skye  terrier.  This  dog, 
which  was  exceedingly  intelligent  and  therefore  an  ex- 
cellent subject  for  psychological  study,  "used  to  play 
with  dry  bones,  by  tossing  them  in  the  air,  throwing  them 
to  a  distance,  and  generally  giving  them  the  appearance 
of  animation,  in  order  to  give  himself  the  ideal  pleasure 
of  worrying  them.  On  one  occasion,  therefore,  I  tied  a 
long  and  fine  thread  to  a  dry  bone  and  gave  him  the  latter 
to  play  with.  After  he  had  tossed  it  about  for  a  short 
time  I  took  the  opportunity,  when  it  had  fallen  at  a  dis- 
tance from  him  and  while  he  was  following  it  up,  of 
gently  drawing  it  away  from  him  by  means  of  the  long, 
invisible  thread.  Instantly  his  whole  demeanour  changed. 
The  bone  which  he  had  previously  pretended  to  be  alive, 
began  to  look  as  if  it  were  really  alive,  and  his  astonish- 
ment knew  no  bounds.  He  first  approached  it  with 
nervous  caution,  but,  as  the  slow  recedin,^  motion  con- 
tinued and  he  became  quite  certain  that  the  movement 
could  not  be  accounted  for  by  any  residuum  of  force 
which  he  had  himself  communicated,  his  astonishment 
developed  into  dread,  and  he  ran  to  conceal  himself 
under  some  articles  of  furniture,  there  to  behold  at  a 
distance  the  '  uncanny '  spectacle  of  a  dry  bone  coming 
to  life."  In  this  instance  we  have  the  exercise  of  close 
observation,  judgment,  reason,  and  imagination  culmin- 
ating in  the  exhibition  of  superstitious  fear — all  the  ele- 
ments, in  short,  which  constitute  religious  sentiment  in 
its  crudest  form. 

Animals  are  afraid  of  darkness  for  the  same  reason 
that  children  are.  Thunder,  lightning,  and  other  violent 
meteorological  phenomena,  which  inspire  the  primitive 
man  with  awe  and  therefore  play  a  prominent  part  in  the 


356  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

evolution  of  early  mythology,  produce  a  similar  impres- 
sion upon  many  of  the  lower  animals,  simply  because  they 
are  mysterious  noises  which  appeal  to  the  imagination 
and  stimulate  the  mythopoeic  faculty.  Mr.  Eomanes 
states  that  "  on  one  occasion,  when  a  number  of  apples 
were  being  shot  out  of  bags  upon  the  wooden  floor  of  an 
apple  room,  the  sound  in  the  house  as  each  bag  was  shot 
closely  resembled  that  of  distant  thunder."  A  setter 
was  greatly  alarmed  at  the  noise  until  he  was  taken  to  the 
apple  room  and  shown  the  cause  of  it,  after  which  "  his 
dread  entirely  left  him,  and  on  again  returning  to  the 
house  he  listened  to  the  rumbling  with  all  cheerfulness.'' 
Dogs  and  horses  can  be  completely  cured  of  their  fear  of 
thunder  by  being  present  at  artillery  practice;  they 
imagine  that  they  now  know  what  produces  the  dreadful 
roar,  and  are  henceforth  free  from  all  apprehension  con- 
cerning it. 

To  some  extent  this  sense  of  the  supernatural  seems 
to  enter  into  the  sphere  of  pure  imagination  and  to 
excite  in  the  minds  of  animals  those  vague  feelings  of 
anxiety  and  alarm  arising  from  mere  figments  of  the 
brain  and  characterized  as  superstition.  The  following 
incident,  "  illustrating  the  instinctive  fear  of  death  and 
consciousness  of  its  presence  manifested  by  birds,"  is 
related  by  Buist:  "A  hen  canary  died,  was  buried,  the 
nesting  establishment  broken  up,  the  surviving  cock  bird 
removed  to  a  new  cage,  and  the  hatching  cage  itself  thor- 
oughly cleansed  and  purified,  and  put  aside  till  the  fol- 
lowing spring.  Never,  however,  could  any  bird  after- 
ward endure  being  placed  in  that  cage.  They  fought 
and  struggled  to  get  out,  and,  if  all  in  vain  their  efforts, 
they  moped,  huddling  close  together,  thoroughly  un- 
happy, refusing  to  be  comforted  by  any  amount  of  sun- 


THE  RELIGIOUS  SENTIMENT.  357 

shine,  companionship,  or  dainty  food."  The  experiment 
was  tried  with  foreign  birds,  that  had  not  been  in  the 
house  when  the  death  of  the  hen  occurred,  and  could  not, 
therefore,  have  known  anything  of  the  melancholy  event 
by  observation.  The  result,  however,  was  always  the 
same.     "  For  the  future  that  cage  to  them  was  haunted." 

It  is  a  common  belief  that  many  animals  can  see 
ghosts  and  future  events.  Justinus  Kerner  declares  (Die 
Seherin  von  Prevost,  i,  125)  that  they  are  endowed  with 
second  sight,  and  that  numerous  facts  can  be  adduced 
in  proof  of  it.  This  uncanny  faculty  is  supposed  to  be 
especially  strong  in  dogs  and  horses.  Storks,  too,  are 
known  to  have  foreseen  the  burning  of  houses  on  which 
they  had  been  wont  to  build  their  nests,  rnd  to  have 
abandoned  them,  taking  up  their  abode  on  other  build- 
ings or  on  trees  in  the  vicinity.  No  sooner  had  the  an- 
ticipated conflagration  taken  place,  and  a  new  house 
been  erected  on  the  same  site,  than  the}  returned  and 
built  their  nests  on  it  as  heretofore.  That  Balaam's  ass 
perceived  the  angel,  which  was  beyond  the  ken  of  the 
prophet,  ought  to  suffice  to  convince  every  believer  in  the 
plenary  inspiration  of  the  Bible  of  the  spectre-seeing 
powers  of  the  lower  animals.  The  ghost  stories  told  of 
dogs  and  horses  are  quite  as  numerous  and  well  authenti- 
cated as  those  which  have  been  told  of  men.  There  is 
no  psychological  theory  of  apparitions  that  does  not  ex- 
plain these  strange  phenomena  as  satisfactorily  in 
beasts  as  in  human  beings.  The  night  side  of  Nature 
casts  its  gloom  over  both. 

Of  course,  if  religion  is  a  direct  and  special  revelation 
to  man,  then  no  sentient  creature  prior  pnd  inferior  to 
him  could  have  any  share  in  it.  The  hypothesis  of  a 
pure  primitive  monotheism,  of  which  all  polytheistic 


358  ANIMAL  PSYCHOLOGY. 

systems  of  belief  are  mere  distortions  and  degradations, 
would  also  tend  to  exclude  the  lower  animals  from  the 
possession  of  religious  sentiment  by  showing  that  the 
religious  history  of  the  race  has  been  a  downward  instead 
of  an  upward  movement,  a  corruption  instead  of  an  evolu- 
tion. Its  growth  would  not  correspond  to  the  growth 
of  intelligence,  and  it  could  no  longer  be  studied  as  a 
psychological  phenomenon,  but  would  be  removed  at 
once  from  the  province  of  scientific  investigation. 
There  can  be  no  science  of  the  supernatural,  since  science 
recognises  only  the  operation  of  natural  laws.  A  mir- 
acle that  can  be  explained,  as  the  rationalistic  school  of 
theology  has  attempted  to  do,  ceases  thereby  to  be  a 
miracle.  The  essence  of  religion  is  mystery;  the  sole 
aim  of  science  is  to  clear  up  and  thus  do  away  with  mys- 
teries— a  goal  which  it  is  always  tending  toward  but  will 
never  reach,  for  the  same  reason  that  an  asymptotic  line 
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guage.   New  York,  1867. 

Whitney,  William  Dwight.  Oriental  and  Linguistic  Studies. 
New  York,  1872. 

Willis,  Th.  De  Anima  Brutorum  quae  hominis  vitalis  ac  sensitiva 
est.    Amstelod,  1674. 

Wilson,  Andrew.  Sketches  of  Animal  Life  and  Habits.  London, 
1877. 

W.  de  F.  (Antoine  Edmond  Wolheim).  Animaux  Diplomates. 
Leipzig,  1863. 

Wood,  J.  G.    Man  and  Beast,  Here  and  Hereafter.    London,  1874. 

Wundt,  Wilhelm.  Vorlesungen  liber  die  Menschen-  und  Thier- 
seele.  2  vols.  Leipzig,  1863-'64.  2d  ed.  1  vol.  1892.  Eng- 
lish translation.    London,  1896. 

Youatt,  William.  The  Obligation  and  Extent  of  Humanity  to 
Brutes,  etc.    London,  1839. 

Young,  Thomas.  An  Essay  on  Humanity  to  Animals.  London, 
1798. 

Ziegler,  H.  E.  tTber  den  Begriff  des  Instincts.  Verh.  der 
Deutschen  Zoolog.  Gesellschaft.    Leipzig,  1891. 


UNIVERSITY 

INDEX 


Abbott,  Dr.,  on  mechanical  skill  of 

the  oriole,  200 ;  on  aphasia  in  the 

quail,  299. 
Abel,  his  offering,  90. 
Addis,  W.  E.,  on  animals  as  things, 

97. 
-^schylus,  quoted,  31. 
Agriculture,  conservative  influence 

of,  39 ;  first  promoters  of,  43 ;  holi- 
ness of,  60-69;  fatal  to  nomadic 

life,  Yl. 
Ahuramazda,  59,  62,  66,  67. 
Airyana-Va^jo,  64. 
Akemmano,  69. 
Albert.,  meaning  of,  22. 
Alexander,  meaning  of,  22. 
Aliens,    as    enemies,    26;    fonner 

treatment   in    England,  Francje, 

and  Italy,  34^37. 
Alix,  E.,  on  musical  poodles,  345. 
Altum,  on  the  "  natural  necessity  " 

of  bird-song,  220. 
Amenophis  III  and  IV,  33. 
Americans,  their  extravagance,  and 

ignorance  of  economic  laws,  102, 

103. 
Amnon,  his  relations  to  Tamar,  51. 
Amphicyon,  ancestor  of  dog  and 

bear,  281. 
Amtsberg,  his  experiment  with  a 

pike,  186. 


369 


Anacreon,  extols  the  song  of  the  ci- 
cadse,  342. 

Anasis,  foes  of  agriculture,  72. 

Anaximander,  as  an  evolutionist, 
137. 

Ancon  sheep,  origin  of,  214. 

Angro-Mainyush,  69. 

Animals,  denial  of  their  rights  by 
mediaeval  and  modern  school- 
men, 2,  96-99 ;  in  the  eyes  of 
primitive  man,  4;  superstitious 
fear  and  worship  of,  6, 118-120 ; 
effect  of  domestication  on  their 
relations  to  man,  7 ;  Zarathustra, 
doctrine  of,  8,  59  ;  regard  of  Bud- 
dhists and  Brahmans  for,  9,  88, 
148, 164;  Greek  speculation  con- 
cerning, 10 ;  views  of  early  Chris- 
tians concerning,  11 ;  moral  and 
religious  symbolism  of,  12 ;  capi- 
tal punishment  and  excommuni- 
cation of,  13, 155 ;  penal  laws  for 
the  protection  of,  14, 100-102 ;  the 
clergy  opposed  to  riglits  of,  14; 
Lotze's  theory  of  animal  souls,  15 ; 
measure  of  man's  duty  to,  18 ;  an- 
thropocentric  teachings  of  Holy 
Writ,  10,  88-90;  practical  work- 
ings of  biblical  teachings  con- 
cerning, 89-93,  96-99,  146-152, 
156-161 ;  arguments  in  favour  of 


370 


INDEX. 


immortality  of,  94;  limitation  of 
man's  dominion  over,  97 ;  cruel- 
ties inflicted  in  transporting,  101 ; 
influence  of  the  doctrine  of  me- 
tempsychosis, 135-138;  societies 
for  protection  of,  138;  hospitals 
for,  139-144,  147;  excessive 
scruples  of  Jainas  concerning, 
141 ;  tormented  by  Mantegazza, 
142 ;  foolish  fondness  for  pet,  145 ; 
Munich  Thierschutzverein,  149; 
dilemma  of  a  philozoic  par- 
son, 149;  scriptural  injunctions 
of  kindness  to,  149-152,  164;  in 
hagiology,  152-159 ;  "  not  Chris- 
tians," 160;  attitude  of  Catholic 
Church  toward,  159-162;  decree 
of  Pius  IX  concerning,  160 ; 
cruelty  of  Italians  to,  154,  160; 
inalienable  rights  of,  164;  psy- 
chical kinship  with  man,  167, 171 ; 
power  of  choice  in  the  lowest, 
172 ;  no  precise  line  of  demarca- 
tion between  vegetables  and,  171- 
173 :  Schneider's  psychological 
classification  of,  175,  178-181, 
185;  Oken's  temperaments  of, 
179;  mental  impulses  of  food- 
storing,  179 ;  sentinel-posting, 
182, 183 ;  mutual  benefit  associa- 
tions of,  184;  didactic  procedures 
with,  186-189;  paternal  training 
of,  189,  198;  wild  speculations 
about,  191 ;  fanciful  distinctions 
between  man  [and,  192-194;  dif- 
ference in  bodily  constitution 
and  its  influence  on  mental  de- 
velopment of  man  and,  194-196  ; 
institutions  common  to  man  and, 
197 ;  communities  of,  198 ;  im- 
provableness  of,  198, 200-206, 212- 
216 ;  military  organization  of, 
210  ;  inheritable  qualities  of,  213- 
215 ;  their  conceptual  world  com- 
pared with  that  of  savages,  215, 


225;   influence  of  domestication 
on  their  mental  development,  216- 
218;  tamability  of,  218;  "time- 
sense"  in,  223-227;   tradition  in 
communities  of,  225;  suicide  of, 
227;   nature  of  benevolence    in, 
228;    conjugal     unions    of,    228, 
229;  jealousies  of,  229;  sense  of 
community  in,  230  ;  courts  of  jus- 
tice held  by,  230-235;  criminal 
impulses  in,  236 ;  social  and  in- 
dustrial organizations  of,  227-240 ; 
adaptation  to  environment,  240- 
243 ;  relapse  into  barbarism,  241 ; 
diflerent  stages  of  evolution,  247 ; 
grades  of  intelligence,  250 ;  size 
of   brain  and    mental    capacity. 
252;   personal  benevolence    and 
altruism  of,  255-257 ;  use  of  tools 
by,  257-265 ;  as  miners,  263  ;  logi- 
cal faculty  of,  265-267 ;  humour 
in,  268;   speech  as  the  Kubicon 
between  man  and,  271-273,  291- 
295,  300;    formation    of  general 
concepts  by,  282,  286,  291,  310; 
ability    to    count,    285;    strange 
transformations     of    individual, 
280 ;  evolution  of  difiTerent  species 
of,  281 ;  vices  of  civilization  ac- 
quired by,  313 ;  language  of,  291- 
294,  299-310,  310-330 ;  knowledge 
of  the  flne  arts  as  a  distinction 
between  man  and,  333;  inferior- 
ity of  man  in  physical  structure 
to,  334, 335 ;  long  and  helpless  in- 
fancy of  some,  335 ;  advantage  of 
quadruman  over  quadruped,  336 ; 
aesthetic  sense  and  artistic  skill 
of,  337-339 ;  appreciation  of  mel- 
ody by,  339-350 ;  musical  instruc- 
tion of,  840,  344,  345;   play  im- 
pulse   in,  345-347;   musical  ap- 
paratus   of,    343;    musical    per- 
formances   by,    343-350;    colour 
sense  in,  87,  350 ;  religious  senti- 


INDEX. 


371 


ment  in,  351-358 ;  fear  of  thunder 
and  darkness,  355,  356;  fear  of 
ghosts  and  second  sight  in,  356, 
357. 

Anthony,  St.,  his  sermon  to  fishes, 
155;  celebration  of  his  feast  in 
Kome,  156. 

Anti-Semitism,  a  survival  of  tribal- 
ism, 50. 

Ants,  progressive  evolution  of,  205 ; 
structure  of  their  hills,  206 ; 
white,  207 ;  agricultural,  245-247  ; 
cazadores  or  nomadic,  247  ; 
"cattle-lifting,"  248;  slavehold- 
ing,  249 ;  difi'erence  of  intelli- 
gence in,  250  ;  ingenuity  of,  251 ; 
size  of  brain  and  mental  capacity 
of,  252 ;  babyhood  and  education 
of,  253 ;  moral  attributes  of  honey, 
255;  Darwin's  experiment  with, 
255;  method  of  heating  their 
habitations,  265  ;  language  of  ges- 
ture highly  developed  by,  292; 
language  of,  311,  318. 

Apes,  social  organization  of,  41 ; 
wine-making  and  pottery-fabri- 
cating, 261 ;  language  of,  315,  317, 
324 ;  long  infancy  of  anthropoid, 
335;  manual  dexterity  of,  262, 
336.    See  Monkeys. 

Aphasia,  cause  and  examples  of, 
295-298. 

Aphides,  kept  by  ants  as  cattle, 
248,  249. 

Apiarists,  improvements  introduced 
by,  202. 

Apuleius,  his  Golden  Ass,  115; 
reputation  as  a  sorcerer,  116. 

Aquinas.    See  Thomas  Aquinas. 

Archasopteryx,  ancestor  of  birds  and 
reptiles,  281. 

Arda-Viraf,  his  piety  and  incest,  13. 

Aristophanes,  quoted,  23. 

Aristotle,  quoted,  10 ;  on  the  re-em- 
bodiment  of  poets    as  cygnets, 


114 ;  on  heart-beating  as  peculiar 
to  man,  191 ;  on  ph6n6  and  pso- 
phos,  309. 

Armaiti,  personification  of  the 
earth,  59,  66. 

Arnold,  Thomas,  perplexed  by  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  animals,  91, 
92,  93. 

Arnold,  T.,  quoted,  97. 

Arts,  first  developed  by  dwarfs  and 
cripples,  44 ;  animal  appreciation 
of  the  fine,  333-351. 

Asceticism  repudiated  by  Parsis,  61. 

Ashemaogho,  the  impure,  63. 

Asia,  meaning  of,  22. 

Asperena,  meaning  of,  62. 

Ass,  use  of  weapons  by  an,  259 ;  vi- 
sion of  Balaam's,  357. 

Assyrians,  their  distinction  of  col- 
ours, 351. 

AstovidhotuB,  the  death  demon,  63. 

Astrology,  persistence  of,  85. 

Astronomy,  geocentric,  24,  82. 

Augustine,  on  sorcery,  115 ;  on  pre- 
destination, 130. 

Austin,  Philip,  denies  the  duty  of 
kindness  to  brutes,  97. 

Australians,  as  beasts  of  venery,  78 ; 
their  numerals  and  words  for 
colours,  287. 

Avesta,  quoted,  2,  51,  59-63. 

Bacon,  Lord,  quoted,  93. 

Bactria,  social  evolution  in,  58. 

"Bai  Sakarbai,"  hospital  for  ani- 
mals, 142. 

Balantis,  tribal  ethics  of  the,  25. 

Barbarian,  origin  of  the  word,  23 ; 
later  applications  of  the  term,  31, 
32 ;  conservatism  of  the,  70. 

Barclay,  John,  on  the  immortality 
of  animals,  94. 

Barley,  first  grain  cultivated,  44. 

Barnum,  his  contract  with  King 
Thibo  for  a  white  elephant,  143. 


372 


INDEX. 


Barthelot,  Major,  his  cruelty  to 
Africans,  78. 

Bastion,  on  termites  in  India,  211. 

Bateman,  on  aphasia,  298. 

Battas,  parricide  as  a  mark  of  filial 
affection,  109. 

Bayle,  on  comets  as  portents,  86. 

Bedouins,  hospitality  of,  30 ;  hostil- 
ity to  agriculture,  72. 

Bees,  colonization  of,  198 ;  artificial 
comb  for,  202 ;  products  of  human 
industry  used  by,  203;  "sweat- 
ing," 203-205 ;  cause  of  the  hex- 
agonal form  of  their  cells,  205; 
liability  to  error,  207,  note ;  math- 
ematical thinking  of,  224 ;  demo- 
cratic government  of,  237 ;  mater- 
nal functions  and  conjugal  rela- 
tions of  their  queen,  237-239; 
drones  as  prince  consorts,  239; 
radical  changes  in  the  habits  of, 
240  ;  degeneracy  of,  240-242 ; 
brigand,  241 ;  effect  of  alcoholic 
drinks  on,  242;  interhival  rela- 
tions of,  243;  foresight  of,  244; 
brain  of,  252;  pantomimic  lan- 
guage of,  292. 

Beethoven,  his  musical  spider,  341. 

Belief,  supersession  of  kinship  by 
religious,  53.    See  Keligion. 

Bell,  A.  Graham,  his  attempts  to 
teach  animals  to  speak,  216,  300, 

Bellarmine,  Cardinal,  his  nasty 
means  of  grace,  152. 

Benares,  as  the  centre  of  the  earth, 
21. 

Bentham,  Jeremy,  on  animal  rights, 
13. 

Bergh,  Henry,  on  the  cruelty  of 
corporations  to  animals,  101, 102. 

Berlin,  meaning  of,  22. 

Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  on  the  tolera- 
tion of  Jews,  74. 

Bernardino  de  Saint- Pierre,  his  tele- 
ology, 83. 


Berzelius,  on  the  products  of  vital 
forces,  174. 

Bethlehem,  as  the  centre  of  the 
earth,  21. 

Bettzieh-Beta,  on  termites,  208. 

Bible,  anthropocentric  teachings  of 
the,  149, 150, 152. 

Birds,  Jewish  protection  of,  151; 
Italian  cruelty  to,  154 ;  relation  of 
saints  to,  154,  157 ;  sentinel-post- 
ing, 182;  conjugal  instinct  in, 
197;  parasitic,  199;  their  im- 
provements in  nest  building, 
200-202;  "time-sense"  in,  226; 
conjugal  virtue  of,  229 ;  sense  of 
community  in,  230;  courts  of 
justice  held  by,  230-234 ;  use  of 
tools  by,  260;  their  ability  to 
count,  285;  aphasia  in,  299;  ar- 
ticulation by,  300  (see  Pakrots 
and  Eavens)  ;  aesthetic  sense  in, 
338,  339 ;  musical  education  of, 
329,  340;  the  play  impulse  in, 
345-350;  musical  concerts  by, 
347-349 ;  dancing,  350. 

Blanchard,  on  termites,  208. 

Blood,  brotherhood  of,  24-26 ;  su- 
perstitious regard  for,  26-28; 
Christian  enlargement  of  the 
bond  of,  28,  29 ;  all  nations  and 
all  creatures  of  one,  164.  See 
Ethics. 

Body,  development  of  the  soul  de- 
pendent upon  the,  15 ;  seat  of  the 
soul,  26 ;  made  by  the  soul,  121 ; 
mind  not  destroyed  with  the, 
123;  acquisition  of  new  organs  of 
the,  124 ;  no  knowledge  of  spirit 
separate  from  the,  132-135. 

Boethius,  on  metamorphoses,  116. 

Bordeaux,  termites  in,  211. 

Bouillard,  on  aphasia,  295. 

Bower  bird,  aesthetic  sense  and  ar- 
tistic taste  of  the,  338. 

Bozen,  ingenuity  of  ants  in,  251. 


INDEX. 


373 


Brahraanism,  doctrine  concerning 
animals,  9,  88,  138 ;  caste  in,  58 ; 
necessity  of  a  son  to  salvation,  63. 

Brehm,  A.  E.,  on  the  language  of 
apes,  315 ;  on  ithe  nearness  of  the 
ape  to  man,  337. 

Broca,  on  aphasia,  295,  297. 

Brotherhood,  the  sole  cement  of 
primitive  society,  25;  Christian 
theory  of  universal,  28;  Cicero 
and  Marcus  Aurelius  on  human, 
28,  29;  artificial  creation  of,  27; 
feigned  by  sovereigns,  33  ;  natu- 
ral superseded  by  religious,  55. 

Buchner,  quoted,  137;  on  drones, 
238 ;  on  demoralized  bees,  242 ; 
on  the  rearing  and  training  of 
ants,  253,  254. 

Buddha  and  Buddhism,  doctrine  of 
animal  life,  9,  88,  127, 136,  138. 

Buffon,  on  animal  intelligence,  202, 
212,  213,  291. 

Buist,  on  canaries  and  the  haunted 
cage,  356. 

Bullfights,  under  the  auspices  of 
the  Church,  161. 

Burnaburiash,  his  correspondence, 
33. 

Burns,  quoted,  90, 131. 

Butler,  Bishop,  on  animal  immor- 
tality, 94. 

Cain,  type  of  primitive  man,  30 ;  his 
ofierings,  90. 

Calvin,  John,  his  doctrine  of  pre- 
destination, 130,  168. 

Canaries,  conjugal  virtue  of,  229 ; 
appreciation  of  melody  by,  339 ; 
ghost-seeing,  356. 

Cannibalism,  origin  of,  27,  118 ; 
practised  by  Europeans,  79. 

Canning,  George,  his  abolition  of 
the  alien  law,  38. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  his  false  etymol- 
ogy of  king,  41. 


Carrion  fly,  acts  under  the  impulse 
of  perception,  180. 

Carus,  Paul,  on  naming,  291 ;  on 
the  language  of  ants,  318. 

Cassiodorus,  quoted,  191. 

Cathrein,  Victor,  ridicules  kind- 
ness to  animals,  99. 

Cato,  on  usury,  74. 

Cats,  asylum  for,  144 ;  training  of, 
219 ;  standard  of  goodness  in,  228 ; 
the  play  impulse  in,  347. 

Cattle,  care  for,  2 ;  cruelty  in  trans- 
porting, 101, 102. 

Cazadores,  nomadic  ants,  247. 

Cells  of  bees,  cause  of  their  form, 
205. 

Celsus,  his  polemic  against  anthro- 
pocentric  Christianity,  10. 

Cicero,  cosmopolitan  spirit  of,  28. 

Chakar,  64. 

Chakars,  musical  concerts  of,  348, 
349. 

Chaumette,  his  aviury,  145. 

Chekiang,  wine-m  iking  apes  in, 
261. 

Chester,  meaning  of,  22. 

Chevage,  tax  on  aliens,  36. 

Chimpanzees.  See  Apes  and  Mon- 
keys. 

China,  the  centre  of  the  earth,  23. 

Chinvad,  bridge  to  paradise,  63, 132. 

Christ,  his  gospel  a  sword,  56. 

Christianity,  its  attitude  toward  ani- 
mals, 10,  88-99, 138. 

Cicada,  prized  by  the  Greeks  as  a 
singer,  342 ;  now  known  to  be  a 
violinist,  343. 

Clifibrd,  Prof.,  on  the  movements  of 
atoms,  302. 

Cobbe,  Frances  Power,  on  zoophi- 
ly,  3. 

Cock,  cruel  treatment  of  the,  160, 
161. 

Cockneyism,  a  survival  of  tribalism. 


374 


INDEX. 


Colour,  sense  of,  in  animals  and  sav- 
ages, 287,  338,  351. 

Columbanus,  St.,  wild  animals  at- 
tracted by,  153. 

Comets,  as  portents,  86. 

Comte,  Aug.,  on  fetichism  in  ani- 
mals, 353. 

Conception,  impulse  of,  175-181. 

Congo,  cruelties  in,  78. 

Consanguinity,  the  primitive  basis 
of  moral  obligation  and  social 
union,  25.   See  Blood  and  Beoth- 

EBHOOD. 

Consciousness,  in  the  lowest  forms 
of  life,  167. 

Cope,  Prof.,  on  superiorities  of  ani- 
mals to  man  in  physical  structure, 
334. 

Cormorants,  tool-using,  260. 

Couthon,  his  pet  spaniel,  145. 

Cowper,  William,  quoted,  151, 193. 

Creed,  cohesive  attraction  of  the, 
66. 

Cripples,  the  first  inventors,  44. 

Crows,  tool-using,  260. 

Crystallization,  phenomena  of,  172- 
174. 

Cuckoo,  habits  of  different  species 
of,  199. 

Cyril,  quoted,  39. 

Cyrus,  wedded  to  his  sister,  51. 

Czynski,  Czeslav,  hypnotic  sugges- 
tion and  swindling,  117. 

Dadabhoi  Naoroji,  a  "nigger,"  46. 

Dakotas,  as  dog-eaters,  118. 

Dards,  primitive  barbarism  of,  70. 

Darmesteter,  his  solar  theory  of 
Zarathustra,  69. 

Darwin,  Charles,  on  intelligence  in 
the  oyster,  17  ;  his  Origin  of  Spe- 
cies, 14,  137 ;  on  worms,  151 ;  on 
the  fallibility  of  bees,  207,  note  ; 
on  agricultural  ants,  245  ;  on  the 
ant's  brain,  252 ;  his  experiment 


with  ante,  255;  on  the  different 
barking  tones  of  the  dog,  282 ;  on 
the  sense  of  melody  and  colour  in 
birds,  337  ;  on  religious  sentiment 
in  animals,  352. 

Darwin,  Erasmus,  his  theory  of  di- 
vine beneficence,  103. 

Dasyus,  aborigines  of  India,  68. 

Death,  continuous  process  of, 
134. 

Descartes,  on  animals  as  machines, 
170. 

Detractus  personalis,  pimishment 
for  emigration,  40. 

Devas,  diabolized  deities,  59. 

Dogs,  tortured  by  Mantegazza,  142 ; 
asylum  for,  144;  as  specialists, 
216  ;  reared  for  food,  218 ;  "  time- 
sense  "  in,  226 ;  generous  friend- 
ship of,  256,  257  ;  ak-ak  denoting 
eagerness  in  the  language  of,  282 ; 
distinct  barking  tones  acquired 
through  domestication,  282,  283 ; 
power  of  classification,  286  ;  abil- 
ity to  count,  288,  322  ;  expression 
by  wagging  the  tail,  292 ;  at  the 
mercy  of  metaphysicians,  294; 
able  to  articulate  words,  300  ;  sent 
on  errands  and  to  the  market, 
321-323 ;  compared  to  monkeys, 
336 ;  musical  taste  and  training 
of,  343-345 ;  religious  sentiment 
in,  352-355 ;  ghost  stories  about, 
357. 

Domestication,  results  of,  216-219, 
282,  283. 

Donkey,  club  wielding,  259. 

Droit  d'aubaine,  against  aliens,  85. 

Drones,  the  prince  consorts  of  the 
hive,  239. 

Droste-Hulfshoff,  Annette  von,  her 
poem  The  Lark,  342. 

Dybowski,  on  Gamer's  studies  of 
simian    speech    in    Africa,   330- 


INDEX. 


375 


Ebrard,  on  ants,  254. 

Edinburgh,  meaning  of,  22. 

Edmonson,  Dr.,  on  the  judicial  pro- 
ceedings of  hooded  crows,  231. 

Eleusis,  privilege  of  asses  at,  150, 
151. 

Elliott,  George,  quoted,  90. 

Emerson,  Kalph  Waldo,  on  evolu- 
tion, 11, 135. 

Emigration,  right  of,  47-49;  barbar- 
izing effects  of,  78-80. 

Empedocles,  137. 

English,  insularity  of  the,  23  ;  boor, 
34 ;  laws  against  aliens,  37,  38 ; 
tribal  spirit  in  their  extradition 
treaties,  40;  King  George's  men, 
49 ;  treatment  of  Negritos,  78 ; 
cannibalism,  79. 

flpaves,  aliens  as  waifs,  36. 

Ethics,  relation  of  animal  psycholo- 
gy to  evolutional,  2,  4, 14 ;  philo- 
zoio,  3 ;  ethnocentric,  24-26,  73 : 
survivals  of  tribal,  33-40,  49,  50, 
77-79 ;  supersession  of  ethnocen- 
tric by  theocentric,  53,  55-57,  58, 
78-76 ;  antbropocentric,  89  ;  de- 
fect of  Jewish  and  Christian,  88- 
99 ;  scientific  basis  of  philozoic, 
96 ;  legal  recognition  of  animal 
rights  as  a  corollary  to  evolution- 
al, 100. 

Europe,  meaning  of,  22. 

Expatriation,  right  of,  47. 

Family,  included  domestic  animals, 
8 ;  differentiated  out  of  the  tribe, 
41,  229. 

Fate,  Oriental  idea  of,  121, 122. 

Feigning  death,  by  animals,  181. 

Fellahin,  strangers  hated  by,  84; 
meaning  of,  72. 

Feuerbach,  Ludwig,  137. 

Fire,  used  by  animals,  264, 

Fiske,  John,  Herbart'a  idea  devel- 
oped by,  194. 


Flourens,  on  mind  in  animals,  291. 

Fliigel,  O.,  on  animal  tribunals  and 
simulation,  234,  235. 

Forel,  on  ants,  254. 

Fournier,  his  fondness  for  squirrels, 
145. 

Francis  of  Assisi,  St.,  wolf  of  Gub- 
bio  reformed  by,  155  ;  his  Cantico 
delle  Creature  and  sympathy  with 
beasts  and  birds,  157, 158. 

Frederick  III,  his  decree  concern- 
ing Jews  in  Nuremberg,  74. 

Free  will,  nature  and  extent  of,  167- 
170. 

French,  childish  exhibition  of*  tri- 
balism by  the,  25. 

Fuligatti,  biography  of  Cardinal 
Bellarmine,  152. 

Gabella  hereditarius,  against  aliens, 

40. 
Galen,  on  man's  upward  look,  192. 
Gall,  St.,  bear  addressed  in  Latin 

by,  153. 
Galton,  Francis,  on  training  animals 

for  mental  power,  215. 
Garner,  K.  L.,  his  studies  of  simian 

speech  and  their  results,  31^-315, 

319,  328-332. 
Gatha  dialect,  58. 
C  ennadius,  on  creation,  84. 
Geography,  ethnocentric,  20-24, 82. 
George,  meaning  of,  22. 
Germans,  called  Nfimici,  24;  ethics 

of  ancient,  25;  called  barbarians 

by  the  Eomans,  32;  old  laws  of 

the,  35,  36. 
Gervinus,   on  the   ancient  Greeks' 

love  of  nature,  190. 
Gessner,  K.,  on  the  stargazer,  184. 
Gifford,  Ellen  M.,  her  refuge  for 

cats  and  dogs,  144. 
Glendower,  85, 153. 
Goar,  St.,   hinds   commanded   by, 

163. 


376 


INDEX. 


Goethe,  horoscopy  of,  86;  on  pre- 
existence  with  Frau  von  Stein, 
116 ;  on  Orient  and  Occident,  162 ; 
on  language,  289. 

Goring,  Prof.,  840. 

Gould,  on  the  bower  bird,  338. 

Graber,  Vitus,  on  the  relative  size  of 
insect  brains,  252 ;  on  the  musical 
apparatus  of  the  cicada,  343. 

Graul,  on  the  treatment  of  animals 
in  India,  136. 

Gray,  quoted,  87. 

Greeks,  early  speculations  of  the,  14 ; 
survival  of  their  geographical 
terms,  22;  their  classification  of 
mankind,  23;  their  attitude  to 
)  strangers,  31;  their  disregard  for 
the  decrepit,  139. 

Green,  Prof,  on  the  mental  opera- 
tions of  a  burnt  dog  in  the  pres- 
ence of  fire,  294. 

Grenville,  Lord,  his  alien  bill, 
38. 

Groos,  Karl,  on  the  play  impulse  in 
animals,  347. 

Habeneck,  his  musical  poodle,  345. 

Haeckel,  Ernst,  on  treatment  of  ani- 
mals in  India,  136 ;  on  aboriginal 
ants,  205. 

Hagen,  H.,  on  termites,  209,  211. 

Hallara,  Henry,  on  the  souls  of 
brutes,  95. 

Hamann,  137. 

Hand,  its  influence  on  mental 
growth,  194,  195. 

Hanikl,  his  remarkable  parrot,  326. 

Hartmann,  Eduard  von,  137. 

Harvey,  anticipated  by  Nemesius, 
11. 

Haug,  65. 

Hawthorne,  his  Donatello,  159. 

Hebrews,  ethnocentric  notions  of, 
6;  survival  of  tribal  marriage 
among,  8;  tribal  religion  of,  57; 


contempt  for  Christians,  75.    See 
Jews. 

Hedley,  John  Cuthbert,  animal 
rights  denied  by,  96. 

Hegel,  quoted,  55. 

Heidegger,  Gotthard,  his  speaking 
raven,  300. 

Heine,  Heinrich,  reflections  of  his 
lizard  at  Lucca,  189. 

Hens,  efi'ect  of  alcohol  on,  243. 

HephaBstus,  44. 

Heraclitus,  on  psophos,  309,  310. 

Herbart,  on  the  disciplinary  value 
of  religion  in  early  society,  55 ;  on 
the  three  chief  causes  of  man's 
mental  development,  194,  334. 

Herbert,  George,  his  precepts  for 
parsons,  90. 

Herder,  on  animals  as  elder  broth- 
ers, 18, 137. 

Hermit  crab,  184. 

Herodotus,  quoted,  43,  57,  63 ;  on 
the  transmigration  of  souls,  110. 

Hettinger,  his  apology  for  Christian- 
ity, 14. 

Hickok,  Dr.,  denies  duties  to  ani- 
mals, 98. 

Hippocrates,  on  the  stargazer,  110. 

Hobbes,  man  rational  because  ora- 
tional,  272. 

Holden,  Prof,  on  the  suicide  of  a 
rattlesnake,  227. 

Homer,  on  kindness  to  strangers,  29. 

Horace,  his  apokyknosis,  114. 

Horoscopy,  85. 

Horses,  cruelty  to,  102 ;  training  of, 
188;  transmission  of  qualities  by, 
213;   "time-sense"  in,  226;  fear 
of   thunder,    356;    ghost-seeing, 
357. 
Hospitality,  sacredness  of,  30;  to- 
kens of,  32. 
Hospitals  for  animals,  139-145, 147. 
Hotspur,  his  retort  to  Glendower, 
85. 


INDEX. 


377 


Huber,  Francois,  on  bees,  207,  note ; 

"royal  treatment"    of,    237;   on 

foresight  in,  244. 
Huber,    Pierre,    on    ants,  207;    on 

"  royal  treatment "  of  ants,  237 ; 

on  slaves  of  ants,  254. 
Hubert,  St.,  his  vision  of  a  stag, 

155. 
Hudson,  W.  H.,  on  the  play  impulse 

in  mammals  and  birds,  345,  346 ; 

on  the  musical  concerts  of  cha- 

kars,  347-349. 
Humboldt,  A.  von,  on  an  Aturian 

parrot,  325. 
Humboldt,   W.  von,  on  language, 

289. 
Hun,  Dr.,  on  child  language,  277. 
Hunger,  as  an  impulse,  55, 175-177. 
Huxley,  his  line  of  separation  be- 
tween animals  and  man,  333. 
Hysenarctos,  ursine  and  canine,  281. 

Impulses,  Schneider's  four  cate- 
gories of,  175. 

Incarnation,  as  a  curse,  113. 

Infusoria,  their  power  of  choice,  170 ; 
metamorphosed  into  algse,  172. 

Insects,  sense  of  colour  in,  87,  350 ; 
vocal  organs  of,  310-312 ;  love  of 
musical  tones,  340;  musical  in- 
struments of,  342,  343. 

Instincts,  analogous  to  habits  in 
man,  18  ;  not  unchangeable,  198, 
210,  212,  240-243  ;  liable  to  error, 
206,  207. 

Institutions  common  to  animals  and 
man,  197. 

International  conscience,  slow 
growth  of,  25. 

Ionic  school,  evolution  taught  by 
the,  9, 137. 

Ivan  the  Terrible,  100. 

Jaeger,  Charles,  on  the  language  of 
animals,  294. 


Jainas,  excessive  fear  of  killing 
animals,  136, 140, 141. 

James,  St.,  care  for  birds,  154. 

Jameson,  Mr.,  his  barbarity  to  ne- 
groes, 78. 

Jameson,  Mrs.,  on  the  delinquen- 
cies of  the  pulpit,  90 ;  on  cruelty 
to  dogs  in  Vienna,  145. 

Janet,  Charles,  on  the  vocal  organs 
of  ants,  312. 

Japu,  artistic  talent  of  the,  839. 

Jerusalem,  the  centre  of  the  earth, 
21. 

Jesse,  on  beehive  fortifications,  241. 

Jesus,  his  belief  in  pre-existence, 
114. 

Jews,  their  ethnocentric  ethics,  23, 
24 ;  superstitious  regard  for  blood, 
26 ;  not  proselytizing,  57 ;  tribal 
feeling,  74-76;  their  schabbesgoi 
and  dread  of  perjury,  76 ;  place 
of  animals  in  their  cosmogony 
and  religion,  88--91 ;  theory  of 
transmigration  acopted  by,  110- 
112 ;  poverty  of  their  scriptures  in 
regard  to  animals'  rights,  149- 
152. 

Julian,  Emperor,  compares  German 
to  the  caw  of  ravens,  293. 

Jus  albinagii,  kolbekerlii,  and  wild- 
fangiatus,  35,  36. 

Kagu,  dancing  feats  of  the,  350. 

Kalewala,  quoted,  4. 

Kapila,  Indian  prototype  of  Darwin, 
166,  note. 

Kedney,  Prof.,  his  argument  against 
evolution,  335. 

Kerner,  Justinus,  on  second  sight 
in  animals,  357. 

Kepler,  85. 

Kilima-Njaro,  a  raid  of  driver  ants 
in,  247. 

Kinship.  See  Blood  and  Brother- 
hood. 


378 


INDEX. 


Kipling,  J.  Lockwood,  on  the  treat- 
ment of  animals  in  India,  135. 

Kitto,  on  the  sacrificial  institution, 
90. 

Knownothingism,  39. 

Kolbenrecht,  36. 

Krause,on  mental  development  in 
relation  to  moral  rights,  18, 137. 

Lactantius,  Lucius,  on  human  broth- 
erhood, 28,  29 ;  his  distinction  be- 
tween men  and  brutes,  192. 

La  Mettrie,  on  men  as  machines, 
170. 

Landois,  Prof.,  on  the  tone  language 
of  mosquitoes,  310,  311. 

Language,  as  a  barrier  between  man 
and  beast,  271-273 ;  as  the  test  of 
rationality,  272;  roots  of,  273- 
276,  278,  281,  283,  302,  303,  315 ; 
child,  276-280 ;  identity  of  thought 
and,  288,  317 ;  a  social  institution, 
288,  289 ;  theories  of  the  origin  of, 
278,  283,  290,  306-308 ;  not  super- 
natural, 306;  pantomimic,  289, 
291,  292,  299 ;  organ  of  articulate, 
295 ;  animal,  see  Animals. 

La  Eochelle,  termites  in,  209,  211. 

Lecky,  on  Egyptian  hospitals  for 
animals,  145. 

Leibnitz,  on  the  use  of  human  speech 
by  animals,  216,  300. 

Lenz,  on  the  maternal  training  of 
kittens,  188  ;  on  tradition  in  bee- 
hives, 243. 

Leonhard,  St.,  feast  of,  157. 

Lessing,  on  the  acquisition  of  new 
senses,  124-126. 

Levant,  local  meaning  of,  22. 

Liberia,  republic  of,  77. 

Lindo,  Miss,  her  hospital  for  horses, 
144. 

Linsecom,  Dr.,  studies  of  Texan 
agricultural  ants,  245,  246. 

Livingstone,  on  the  soko,  267-269. 


Lizard,  Heine's,  189 ;  love  of  music, 
340. 

Lotze,  Hermann,  his  theory  of  souls, 
15, 137. 

Louis  XIV,  absolutism  of,  100. 

Lubbock,  Sir  John,  his  experiment 
with  ants,  250. 

Lucian,  his  imaginary  metamorpho- 
sis, 115. 

Lucretius,  on  human  brotherhood, 
29. 

Ludwig  I,  his  futile  efforts  to  attract 
birds,  159. 

Macarius,  St.,  his  penance,  153. 

Macgowan,  on  wine-making  apes, 
261. 

Magpie,  its  ability  to  count  four, 
285. 

Maine,  Sir  Henry  Sumner,  on  the 
evolution  of  social  institutions, 
25-40,  45,  46,  53. 

Man,  his  place  in  nature,  15,  83-89, 
99;  turning  point  in  his  evolu- 
tion, 17 ;  world  of  primitive,  20 ; 
ethics  of  primitive,  24,  73 ;  broth- 
erhood of,  28,  33  ;  social  survivals 
of  palaeozoic,  33,  34-38 ;  suprem- 
acy of,  89-99, 192-194;  his  superi- 
ority and  inferiority  in  bodily 
structure,  194,  334. 

Manchuria,  wine-making  apes  in, 
261. 

Mandrill,  vicious  nature  of  the,  312- 
315 ;  teachableness  of  the,  313. 

Manichseans,  metempsychosis 

taught  by  the,  112. 

Mansel,  Prof.,  on  language  and 
thought,  288. 

Mantegazza,  Prof.,  hospitals  for  ani- 
mals ridiculed  by,  142;  his  "tor- 
mentor," 142. 

Manu,  institutes  of,  121. 

Manyueraa,  their  inferiority  to  the 
soko,  267,  268. 


INDEX. 


379 


Marat,  his  devotion  to  doves,  145. 

Marcus  Aurelius,  his  cosmopolitan 
spirit,  29. 

Marriage,  tribal,  31 ;  with  next  of 
kin,  51,  52 ;  with  ritual  relations 
prohibited,  54;  among  animals, 
197,  228. 

Mather,  Increase,  on  portents,  86. 

Mazdayasnians,  59,  69. 

McCook,  Henry  C,  on  agricultural 
ants,  247 ;  on  honey  ants,  255. 

Mecca,  centre  of  the  earth,  21. 

Mechanical  labour,  its  value  as  a 
discipline,  195. 

Megapode,  artificial  heat  used  by 
the,  265. 

Melody,  appreciated  by  birds,  in- 
sects, and  dogs,  339-349;  monkeys' 
attempts  to  produce,  269,  349. 

Menander,  on  the  brotherhood  of 
man,  28. 

Mercer,  G.  R.,  on  the  language  of 
the  Veddahs,  290. 

Mersenne,  on  the  language  of  ani- 
mals, 323,  325. 

Metempsychosis,  9, 88 ;  universality 
of  the  belief  in,  106-110 ;  held  by 
Jews  and  Manichseans,  110-112; 
exegetically  applied  by  Origen 
112-114;  taught  by  the  Greeks, 
114;  in  mythology  and  folklore, 
117 ;  basis  of  zoOlatry  and  canni- 
balism, 118 ;  as  applied  metaphor, 
121 ;  predestination  explained  by, 
112,  113, 122, 129-132;  individual 
extinction  the  final  aim  of,  127, 
128 ;  from  an  ethical  point  of 
view,  130;  the  embodiment  of 
cherished  propensities,  121,  131 ; 
the  spiritual  counterpart  of  meta- 
morphosis, 132;  as  a  code  of 
morals  in  relation  to  the  lower 
animals,  135-138 ;  correspondence 
of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  to, 
162-164, 166. 
25 


Meyer,  Hans,  on  driver  ants,  247. 

Milton,  his  Stygian  metaphysicians, 
130, 131 ;  on  man  as  God's  master 
work,  193. 

Missing  link,  probable  language  of 
the,  316. 

Moebius,  Dr.,  on  Amtsberg's  experi- 
ment with  a  pike,  186, 188. 

Moggridge,  on  trapdoor  spiders,  258. 

Moleschott,  137. 

Molothrus,  its  essays  at  nest-build- 
ing, 199. 

Monacella,  St.,  protectress  of  hares, 
154. 

Monboddo,  Lord,  his  theory  of  the 
origin  of  language,  290. 

Monkeys,  tool-using,  259,  261,  262 ; 
as  miners,  263 ;  use  of  fire,  264 ; 
reasoning  from  cause  to  effect  by, 
265,  266,  299 ;  ability  to  count, 
286;  language  of,  272,  314-317, 
319,  824,  329-332;  plastic  period 
of,  337  ;  musical  concerts  of,  269, 
343,  349. 

More,  Henry,  on  'our  dimensions, 
124. 

Morioris,  doctor  revered  as  a  god 
by,  352. 

Mormons,  sacredness  of  agriculture 
taught  by,  72. 

Ik[os8,  Capt.  E.,  his  monkeys  as 
miners,  263. 

Mother,  descent  from  the,  26. 

Miiller,  Max,  on  language  as  our 
Kubicon,  271-273 ;  on  roots  as  ul- 
timate facts  in  language,  273; 
Sanskrit  examples  of  the  forma- 
tion of  roots,  274-276,  278,  281, 
282,  303,  304;  concomitant  and 
significant  clamour,  283,  305,  310 ; 
on  the  ability  of  animals  to  count 
and  form  general  concepts,  281, 
282,  235,  286;  on  interjections 
and  exclamations,  283,  287 ;  on  a 
mere  "  fold  of  the  brain,"  295 ;  on 


380 


INDEX. 


the  evolution  of  the  eye,  ear,  and 
brain,  297 ;  on  "  nursery  philol- 
ogy," 301,  312;  Noir^'s  theory 
indorsed  by,  303,  307;  on  the 
Homo  alalus,  304,  305;  on  the 
bow-wow,  pooh-pooh,  and  yo-he- 
ho  theories,  307  ;  on  philology  in 
the  menagerie,  312. 
Munich,  meaning  of,  22;  Thier- 
schutzverein  in,  149;  former 
cruelty  to  animals  in,  159. 

Name  day,  importance  of,  54. 
Nanak,  compared  with  Paul,  128. 
Napoleon  III,  hia  appeal  to  tribal 

prejudice,  49. 
Nation,  modem  conception  of  a,  46. 
Negritos,  as  beasts  of  venery,  78. 
Negroes,     prejudice     against,    77 ; 

analogies  between  monkeys  and, 

267,  268,  337. 
Nemici,    Slavonic    appellation    of 

Germans,  24. 
Neoherbartianism,  15. 
Ncolamarckian  school  of  science 

125. 
Neoplatonism,  10, 137. 
Neopythagoreanism,  10, 137. 
Nicaise,  his  wonderful  parrot,  326- 

328. 
Nirvana,  final   aim  of  Buddhism, 

128,  129. 
Noir4,  on  the  origin  of  language, 

303. 
Nomadic  tribes,  transition  to  seden- 
tary life,  42,  64,  70-73  ;  ants,  247. 
Norton,  Allen  H.,  logical  faculty  in 

his  dog,  266. 
Nursery,   philology    in    the,    301, 

312. 
Nutrition,  impulse  of,  175-177. 

Oken,  his  classification  of  animals, 

178. 
Opossum,  power  of  simulation,  181. 


Orang-outangs.  See  Apks  and  Moir- 

KETS. 

Organisms,  evolution  of  animated, 
167, 171-174. 

Orient,  animal  ethics  in  the,  9,  88, 
136, 145  ;  local  significance  of  the 
term,  22  ;  pantheism  and  atheism 
in  the,  126  ;  evolutional  specula- 
tion in  the,  162-166. 

Origen,  against  Celsus,  10 ;  on  the 
purpose  of  animals,  10 ;  metemp- 
sychosis the  basis  of  his  exege- 
sis, 112, 113. 

Orioles,  skill  in  nest-building,  200, 
201,  339. 

Orpheus,  reborn  as  a  swan,  114. 

Ovid,  on  the  erect  posture  of  man, 
192 ;  in  the  Pontus,  271. 

Owl,  mental  horizon  of  the,  194. 

Paley,  his  definition  of  virtue,  92. 
Panis,  his  golden  pheasants,  145. 
Panjab,  68. 
Panjara    Pol,    described,    139-142, 

143. 
Panpsy  chism,  as  the  basis  of  animal 

rights,  137. 
Panslavism  and  Panteutonism,  50. 
Pantheism,  126, 129. 
Pantomime,  as  a  means  of  expres- 
sion, 291-293. 
Parrots,  use  of  articulate  sounds  by, 

271 ;  remarkable,  325-327. 
Parsi,  classification  of  animals  by 

the,  136. 
Parson,  dilemma  of  a  German,  149. 
Pasturage,  fatal  to  hunting  tribes, 

71. 
Pasu,  meaning  of,  7. 
Patriotism,  a  survival  of  tribalism, 

25  ;  barbarous  exhibitions  of,  34- 

38,  40 ;  Dr.  Johnson's  definition 

of,  228. 
Paul,  his  influence  on  Christianity, 

58 ;  compared  with  Nanak,  128 ; 


INDEX. 


381 


his  doctrine  of  election,  130  ;  on 
soul  and  body,  133 ;  compared 
with  Buddha,  164. 

Paulsen,  137. 

Penguin,  erect  posture  of  the,  194 

Perception,  impulse  of,  175-181. 

Peter,  on  brute  beasts,  152. 

Pfeifer,  his  musically  trained  spar- 
row, 340. 

Pharisees,  as  proselyters,  57. 

Phenacodus  Primsevus,  progenitor 
of  hooked  or  clawed  animals, 
281. 

Physical  organs,  their  relation  to 
mental  development,  15-18. 

Pig,  mental  deterioration  through 
domestication,  217 ;  as  a  hunter, 
218. 

Pike,  Amtberg's  experiment  with  a, 
186-188. 

Pithecoid  man,  bodily  aids  to  the 
mental  growth  of,  17. 

Pius  IX,  his  dictum  concerning  ani- 
mals, 160. 

Plants,  function  of  colour  and  odour 
in,  87. 

Plato,  on  pure  soul,  121 ;  on  the  ori- 
gin of  a^Wori  ideas,  123  ;  on  pre- 
existence,  125 ;  on  the  song  of  the 
cicada,  342. 

Plautus,  Latin  called  barbarous  by, 
81. 

PlimsoU,  Samuel,  on  cattle  ships, 
101. 

Pliny,  on  the  incendiary  bird,  265. 

Plotinus,  10,  137. 

Plutarch,  9 ;  on  religion  as  the  foun- 
dation of  the  state,  55. 

Poe,  E,  A.,  quoted,  85. 

Points  of  the  compass,  20,  22. 

Polyandry,  survivals  of,  31,  41. 

Polynesians,  as  affectionate  parri- 
cides, 108. 

Popes,  Spanish  bullfights  and  the, 
161. 


PorphyriuB,  9, 137 ;  on  the  language 
of  animals,  293. 

Pound,  purpose  of  the,  144. 

Prantl,  Prof.,  on  the  mental  opera- 
tions of  animals,  222-225,  265; 
denies  "  time-sense  "  to  animals, 
223 ;  weak  point  of  his  specula- 
tions, 225  ;  denies  use  of  tools  and 
fire  to  animals,  257,  264 ;  on  the 
art  impulse  in  animals,  224, 
334. 

Prehension,  as  an  aid  to  comprehen- 
sion, 195. 

Preyer,  Prof.,  on  animal  simulation, 
181. 

Primitive  man,  aliens  and  animals 
in  the  eyes  of,  4^8  ;  limited  world 
of,  20-22 ;  idea  of  retributive  jus- 
tice entertained  by,  37;  tribal 
marriage  of,  31,  50  ;  his  belief  in 
the  transmigration  of  souls,  107- 
109, 119. 

Property,  origin  o^  the  conception 
of  personal,  176  soko's  idea  of, 
269. 

Protista,  nature  of,  171, 172. 

Protoplasm,  evolution  of  organisms 
out  of,  173. 

Psophos,  distinction  between  phon^ 
and,  309. 

Psychology,  comparative,  2,17,162; 
scholastic,  2,  3,  220 ;  Neoherbar- 
tian,  15  ;  anthropocentric,  83.  See 
Animals  and  Zoopsychology. 

Public  opinion,  wholesome  influ- 
ence of,  80. 

Pythagoras,  his  memory  of  pre-ex- 
istence,  114,  125,  137 ;  fish  re- 
leased by,  154. 

"  Quack,"  an  onomatopoetic  root  in 
child  language,  276,  277,  279, 
280. 

Quadrumans,  their  advantage  over 
quadrupeds,  886. 


382 


INDEX. 


Quaquas,  animal  worship  by,  119. 
Quatrefages,  on  the  religious  senti- 
ment in  animals,  351. 

Eacine,  on  man's  heavenward  look, 
193. 

^adeau,  E.,  on  the  language  of  ani- 
mals, 323 ;  Mersenne's  theory  of 
language  rejected  by,  324. 

Eats,  benevolence  in,  258. 

Eattlesnake,  suicide  of  a,  227. 

Eavens,  infliction  of  punishment  by, 
234 ;  use  of  fire  by,  264 ;  use  of  ar- 
ticulate speech  by,  300. 

Eeason,  boundaries  of  instinct  and, 
6,  95,  167,  170;  in  animals,  see 
Animals. 

Eeclam,  Prof.,  on  a  musical  spider, 
341. 

Eelationship,  real  and  ritual,  54. 

Eeligion,  moral  influence  of,  9  ;  its 
value  in  early  society,  55 ;  in  ani- 
mals, see  Animals  ;  as  a  revela- 
tion to  man,  357,  358. 

Eichard,  Jules,  on  simian  speech, 
324. 

Eickaby,  Eev.  Joseph,  animals  not 
autocentric,  2. 

Eivayals,  cited,  64. 

Eochefort.  termites  in,  211. 

Eomanes,  on  intelligence  in  the 
amoeba,  17;  on  tool-using  ani- 
mals, 259 ;  on  child  language, 
276 ;  a  chimpanzee's  knowledge 
of  numeration,  286 ;  a  speaking 
terrier,  300 ;  on  the  Homo  alalus, 
305;  example  of  religious  awe  in 
a  Skye  terrier,  355. 

Eome,  urbs  et  orbis,  21. 

Eoots  of  language.  See  Max  Mil- 
ler. 

Eosegger,  on  anarchism  in  the 
hives,  240. 

Eostan,  Prof.,  his  attack  of  aphasia, 
298. 


Eotundity  of  the  earth,  and  the 
rights  of  man,  21. 

Sacy,  Silvestre  de,  on  the  study  of 
Sanskrit,  318. 

Sad-dar,  cited,  63. 

Sadducees,  57, 127. 

Saints,  their  relations  to  animals, 
152-156. 

Sakarbai,  Lady,  her  hospital  for 
animals,  142. 

Samodershez,  title  of  Czar  as  tribal 
sovereign,  45. 

Sanhedrin,  57. 

Sanskrit,  formation  of  roots  in,  274, 
278,  281;  alleged  superiority  of, 
284 ;  as  a  fabrication  of  Brah- 
mans,  318. 

Satar,  64. 

Savages,  tribal  spirit  of,  2, 21 ;  treat- 
ment of  old  and  infirm,  139  ;  abil- 
ity to  count  and  distinguish  col- 
ours, 287, 351.  See  Primitive  Man. 

Sayce,  Prof.,  on  Bushman  speech, 
301. 

Schabbesgol,  76. 

Scheitling,  on  canine  love  of  music, 
344. 

Schelling,  on  religion  as  the  cement 
of  society,  54. 

Schiller,  on  love  of  nature  by  the 
Greeks,  190;  on  art  as  the  pre- 
rogative of  man,  334 ;  on  the  play 
impulse  in  animals,  346. 

Schlagintweit,  on  elephants  as 
dam-builders,  259,  260. 

Schleiermacher,  137. 

Schneider,  G.  H.,  his  four  categories 
of  mental  impulses,  175  ;  his  psy- 
chological classification  of  ani- 
mals, 178 ;  on  the  impulses  of 
food-storing  animals,  179 ;  on  the 
stargazer,  185. 

Schomburgk,  Dr.,  simian  reasoning 
from  cause  to  effect,  265. 


INDEX. 


383 


Schopenhauer,  on  a  radical  defect 

in  Judaism  and  Christianity,  88 ; 

panpsychism,   137 ;    on    men    as 

devils,  147. 
Schutz,    Leopold,    irrationality    of 

brutes  a  dogma  of  the  Church, 

96  ;  animals  as  puppets,  219,  220. 
Scorpions,  suicide  of,  227. 
Scripture,  place  of  animals  in,  88 ; 

kindness  to  animals  inculcated  in 

passages  from,  149,  150. 
Scythians,  their  language  like  the 

chatter  of  cranes,  293. 
Sea    anemone,  its    relation  to  the 

hermit  crab,  184. 
Sea  pudding,  as  gourmand,  170. 
Second  sight,  ascribed  to  animals, 

357. 
Sedley,  on  St.  Peter's  crime,  161. 
Semon,    Kichard,    on     Australian 

tribes,  287. 
Senegambia,    termite    mounds   in, 

212. 
Sensation,  impulse  of,  175, 177-181. 
Sentinels,  posted  by  animals,  182, 

183. 
Shadow-bird,  as  dancer,  350. 
Shakespeare,  quoted,  132,  317. 
Shelley,  on  man's  supremacy,  89. 
Shylock,  as  typical  Hebrew,  76. 
Sikh,  prophet,  128. 
Siliua   Italicus,  on  man's    upward 

look,  193. 
Simmins,  S.,  on  "sweating"  bees, 

202-205. 
Sioux,  idea  of  retributive  justice, 

37. 
Sister,  marriage  of  own,  51,  52. 
Slavonic,  meaning  of,  24. 
Smeathman,    on    termite    soldiers 

and  workers,  210. 
Smith,  William  B.,  his  club-wield- 
ing donkey,  259. 
Smith,  Sydney,  on  brute  souls  as 

immortal,  94. 


Socrates,  on  pre-existence,  114; 
Xantippe's  grievance  against, 
176. 

Soko,  characteristics  of  the,  267- 
269,  343. 

Solomon,  his  cynical  view  of  life, 
147, 148 ;  on  ants,  254. 

Song.    See  Birds. 

Sophocles,  his  use  of  phone,  309. 

Souls,  congeniousness  of,  15 ;  influ- 
ence of  bodily  conditions  on,  16- 
18 ;  immortality  of  brute,  93-96 ; 
transmigration  of,  106  (see  Me- 
tempsychosis) ;  origin  of  the  be- 
lief in  the  immortality  of,  177. 

Spain,  animals'  rights  not  recog- 
nized in,  14, 161. 

Sparrows,  maternal  training  of,  189 ; 
improvements  in  nest-building 
made  by,  202 ;  musical  education 
of,  340. 

Spartans,  guest-hating,  31 . 

Spencer,  Baldwin,  on  the  musical 
tones  of  the  Australian  spider, 
342. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  on  the  play  im- 
pulse in  animals,  346;  on  reli- 
gious awe  and  propitiation  in  ani- 
mals, 353,  354. 

Spento-mainyush,  8. 

Spiders,  their  love  of  music,  340- 
342. 

Spiegel,  62,  65. 

Spinoza,  on  the  indestructibility  of 
mind,  123 ;  as  lens-grinder  and 
philosopher,  176 ;  on  benevolence 
in  animals,  228. 

Spirit.    See  Souls. 

Squirrels,  their  impulses  to  action, 
179 ;  as  explorers,  182. 

Stargazer,  as  angler,  184. 

Steinthal,  on  birds  and  brutes,  193, 
194;  on  the  origin  of  language, 
305,  306. 

Steward,  Dugald,  on  the  adaptabil- 


384 


INDEX. 


ity  of  animals  and  its  value  to 

man,  98. 
Stoics,  liberal  philosophy  of  the,  28, 

137. 
Storks,  their  conjugal  relations  and 

courts  of  justice,  230-234. 
Suicide,  by  reptiles,  227. 
Sunisa,r,  an  Indian  atheistic  poem, 

127. 
^unyav&dinah,  127. 
Svoboda,  quoted,  177. 
Swallows,    their    recent    improve- 
ments in  nest-building,  200. 
Swedenborg,  his  vision,  120. 
Swine,  scientific  breeding  of,  214. 

See  Pia. 
Switzerland,  clannish  spirit  in,  34, 

36. 
Symbol,  as  a  token  of  hospitality, 

32 ;  Christian,  56. 

Tailor-bird,  its  progress  in  artistic 
skill,  201. 

Tait,  Lawrence,  on  drunken  wasps, 
242. 

Tamar,  her  relations  to  Amnon,  51. 

Taylor,  Father,  on  ruffianism,  147. 

Teleology,  absurdities  of  anthropo- 
centric,  83-88. 

Tennent,  Sir  James  Emerson,  on 
the  Veddahs  of  Ceylon,  289,  290. 

Terence,  quoted,  24. 

Termites,  habitations  of,  207-210, 
212;  the  "royal  residence"  of, 
208 ;  engineering  skill  of,  209 ; 
destructiveness  of,  211;  propor- 
tion of  soldiers  to  workers,  210, 
211. 

Tesseres  hospitales,  32. 

Theft,  as  a  tribal  virtue,  25. 

Theocritus,  on  the  soul  of  the  Ne- 
mean  lion,  93. 

Theodicy,  untenableness  of  ortho- 
dox, 104, 131. 

Theophrastus,  9, 137. 


Thibetans,  polyandry  of  the,  31. 

Thibo,  King,  his  white  elephant, 
143. 

Thomas  Aquinas,  his  philosophy 
indorsed  by  the  Catholic  Church, 
3;  head  of  mediaeval  scholiasts, 
12 ;  his  doctrine  of  objective  ne- 
cessity, 130;  on  the  beast  soul, 
134. 

Thoreau,  his  sympathy  with  ani- 
mals, 159. 

Thought,  impulse  of,  175-181. 

Thracians,  their  contempt  for  hus- 
bandry, 43 ;  their  language  like 
the  chatter  of  cranes,  293. 

Titmouse,  skill  of  the,  339. 

Tooke,  Home,  on  interjections,  283 
285. 

Tools,  used  by  animals,  257-263. 

Torres,  Countess  de  la,  her  asylum 
for  cats,  144. 

Totemism,  origin  and  survivals  of,  6. 

Treiber,  Kev.  A.,  his  musical  poo- 
dle, 344. 

Trent,  Council  of,  54. 

Tribe,  ethics  of  the,  24,  78 ;  genesis 
of  the,  41-43;  tribal  superseded 
by  territorial  sovereignty,  42-46  ; 
marriage  within  the,  50-52;  re- 
ligion of  the,  55-58. 

Trousseau,  on  aphasia,  298. 

Tumblebugs,  insectile  and  human, 
180. 

Tycho  de  Brahe,  his  belief  in  as- 
trology, 85. 

Tyrell,  Kev.  George,  his  scholastic 
psychology,  3. 

Umber,  as  a  dancer,  350. 

United  States,  national  stronger 
than  race  feeling  in  the,  46 ;  right 
of  expatriation  asserted  by  the, 
47  ;  legislation  inconsistent  with 
this  right,  48. 

Usury,  primitive  notions  concern- 


INDEX. 


385 


ing,  73 ;  Cato  on,  74 ;  exacted  by 
Jews  from  Gentiles,  74;  laws 
regulating  and  p^inishing,  76. 

Vaccination,  denounced  as  impious, 
84. 

Vedanta,  influence  of  the,  126. 

Vedas,  religion  of  the,  67. 

Veddahs,  not  degraded  but  unde- 
veloped, 290. 

Veland,  represented  as  lame,  44. 

Vendidad,  dualism  of  the,  8,  59; 
sacredness  of  agriculture  in  the, 
60-67. 

Yinci,  Leonardo  da,  his  kindness  to 
birds,  154, 

Viraf,  Ard&,,  his  polygamy  and  in- 
cest, 51. 

Vital  force,  artificial  products  of,  174. 

Vogt,  Carl,  on  the  conjugal  infidel- 
ity of  storks,  232 ;  on  the  human 
and  simian  brain,  296. 

Vogtleute,  36. 

Vohumano,  the  Good  Mind,  8, 62, 68. 

Vulcan,  lameness  of,  44. 

Wagtails,  nests  of,  202. 

Waitz,  Theodor,  on  barbarized 
Europeans,  79. 

Wallace,  A.  K.,  on  simian  infancy, 
335. 

Wallace,  D.  Mackenzie,  on  the  Cos- 
sacks, 71. 

Walton,  Izaak,  on  the  nightingale's 
song,  340. 

Wasps,  eft'ect  of  alcohol  on,  242. 

Wattenwyl,  Brunner  von,  on  the 
music  of  the  cicada,  343. 

Wayland,  Dr.,  on  duties  to  animals, 
98. 

Weaver  bird,  skill  of  the,  339. 

Weir,  James,  battle  of  ants  de- 
scribed by,  248 ;  on  the  vocal  or- 
gans of  ants,  311. 

Wenzel,  G.  I.,  his  studies  of  animal 


speech,  820-823;  conversation  of 
foxes  overheard  by,  320;  his  al- 
phabet of  animal  speech,  321 ; 
knowledge  of  human  language 
acquired  by  dogs,  321,  322. 

Wert,  E.  W.,  cited,  64. 

Weygandt,  on  "  milking  "  bees,  241. 

Whitney,  W.  D.,  on  language  as  a 
social  institution,  288 ;  on  mispro- 
nunciation and  false  accent,  309 ; 
on  the  synergistic  theory,  310. 

Wildfangsrecht,  36. 

Wilks,  Dr.,  on  knowledge  of  the 
fine  arts  as  distinctively  human, 
833. 

Williams,  Monier,  on  hospitals  for 
animals  in  India,  139-141. 

Wives,  three  kinds  of  Persian,  64. 

Wohler,  urea  chemically  produced 
by,  174. 

Woman,  transmission  of  race  quali- 
ties through,  27 ;  the  first  agricul- 
turist, 43. 

Wooing,  primitive  method  of,  50. 

Wordsworth,  quot>^.d,  317. 

Wundt,  Wilhelm,  137;  on  differ- 
ences of  degree  between  man  and 
brute,  170,  171 ;  on  apian  tradi- 
tion, 244,  note;  on  animal  lan- 
guage, 293. 

Xantippe,  the  domestic  character  of, 
176;  New  England  parallels  to, 
177. 

Xenarchos,  on  the  enviable  mute- 
ness of  the  female  cicada,  342. 

Y&jfiavalkya,  definition  of  fate  by, 

122. 
Yima,  enlargement  of  the  earth  by, 

64-66. 
Yukan,  Persian  child-wife,  64. 

Zarathustra,  his  classification  of 
animals,  8 ;  social  reformation  by, 


386 


INDEX. 


68;  his  teachings,  59-63, 
holiness  of  husbandry  proclaimed 
by,  60,  72. 

Zebras,  ostriches  used  as  sentries 
by,  183. 

Zoolatry,  basis  of,  6 ;  ethical  influ- 
ence of,  7 ;  its  relation  to  metemp- 
sychosis, 118 ;  survivals  of,  6, 119 


ZoSphily,  ethics  of,  3 ;  scientific  ba- 
sis of,  96. 

Zoopsychology,  a  branch  of  com- 
parative psychology,  17;  ethical 
influence  of,  96;  metaphysical 
barriers  between  man  and  beast 
gradually  removed  by,  162-164, 
171.    See  Animals. 


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D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY,  NEW  YORK. 


D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY'S  PUBLICATIONS. 

T\EGENERATION,      By  Professor  Max  Nordau. 

'^—^    Translated  from  the  second  edition  of  the  German  work.     8vo. 
Cloth,  $3.50. 

'•  A  powerful,  trenchant,  savage  attack  on  all  the  leading  literary  and  artistic  idols 
of  the  time  by  a  man  of  great  intellectual  power,  immense  range  of  knowledge,  and 
the  possessor  of  a  lucid  style  rare  among  German  writers,  and  becoming  rarer  every- 
where, owing  to  the  very  influences  which  Nordau  attacks  with  such  unsparing  energy, 
such  eager  hatred." — London  Chronicle. 

"  The  wit  and  learning,  the  literary  skill  and  the  scientific  method,  the  righteous 
indignation,  and  the  ungoverned  prejudice  displayed  in  Herr  Max  Nordau's  treatise  on 
'  Degeneration,'  attracted  to  it,  on  its  first  appearance  in  Germany,  an  attention  that 
was  partly  admiring  and  partly  astonished. " — London  Standard. 

'•Let  us  sajr  at  once  that  the  English-reading  public  should  be  grateful  for  an 
English  rendenng  of  Max  Nordau's  polemic.  It  will  provide  society  with  a  subject 
that  may  last  as  long  as  the  present  Government.  .  .  .  We  read  the  pages  without 
finding  one  dull,  sometimes  in  reluctant  agreement,  sometimes  with  amused  content, 
sometimes  with  angry  indignation." — London  Saturday  Review. 

"  Herr  Nordau's  book  fills  a  void,  not  merely  in  the  systems  of  Lombroso,  as  he 
says,  but  in  all  existing  systems  of  English  and  American  criticism  with  which  we  are 
acquainted.  It  is  not  literary  criticism,  pure  and  simple,  though  it  is  not  lacking  in 
literary  qualities  of  a  high  order,  but  it  is  something  which  has  long  been  needed.  .  .  . 
A  great  book,  which  every  thoughtful  lover  of  art  and  literature  and  every  serious 
student  of  sociology  and  morality  should  read  carefully  and  ponder  slowly  and  wisely." 
— Richard  Henry  Stoddard,  in  the  Mail  and  Express. 

"The  book  is  one  of  more  than  ordinary  interest  Nothing  just  like  it  has  ever 
been  written.  Agree  or  disagree  with  its  conclusions,  wholly  or  in  part,  no  one  can  fail 
to  recognize  the  force  of  its  argument  and  the  timeliness  of  its  injunctions." — Chicago 
Evening  Fost. 

r^ENIUS  AND    DEGENERATION.     A  Study  in 
^^    Psychology.     By  Dr.  William  Hirsch.     Translated  from  the 
second  edition  of  the  German  work.     Uniform  with  "  Degen- 
eration."    Large  8vo.     Cloth,  $3.50. 

**The  first  intelligent,  rational,  and  scientific  study  of  a  great  subject.  ...  In  the 
development  of  his  argument  Dr.  Hirs>-.h  frequently  finds  it  necessarjr  to  attack  the 
positions  assumed  by  Nordau  and  Lombroso,  his  two  leading  adversaries.  .  .  .  Only 
calm  and  sober  reason  endure.  Dr.  Hirsch  possesses  that  calmness  and  sobriety.  His 
work  will  find  a  permanent  place  among  the  authorities  of  science." — N.  Y.  Herald. 

"  Dr.  Hirsch's  researches  are  intended  to  bring  the  reader  to  the  conviction  that 
'no  psychological  meaning  can  be  attached  to  the  word  genius.'  .  .  .  While  all  men  of 
genius  have  common  traits,  they  are  not  traits  characteristic  of  genius ;  they  are  such 
as  are  possessed  by  other  men,  and  more  or  less  by  all  men.  .  .  .  Dr.  Hirsch  believes 
that  most  of  the  great  men,  both  of  art  and  of  science,  were  misunderstood  by  their 
contemporaries,  and  were  only  appreciated  after  they  were  dead." — Miss  y.  L.  (iilder, 
in  the  Sunday  World. 

"  '  Genius  and  Degeneration  '  ought  to  be  read  by  evenr  man  and  woman  who  pro- 
fesses to  keep  in  touch  with  modern  thought.  It  is  deeply  interesting,  and  so  full  o< 
information  that  by  intellectual  readers  it  will  be  seized  upon  with  avidity." — Buffalo 
Commercial. 


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P 


'lONEERS  OF  EVOLUTION,  from  Thales  to 
Huxley.  By  Edward  Clodd,  President  of  the  Folk-Lore 
Society  ;  Author  of  "  The  Story  of  Creation,"  "The  Story  of 
•Primitive' Man,"  etc.     With  Portraits.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $1.50. 

*'  The  mass  of  interesting  material  which  Mr.  Clodd  has  got  together  and 
woven  into  a  symmetrical  story  of  the  progress  from  ignorance  and  theory  to 
knowledge  and  the  intelligent  recording  of  fact  is  prodigious.  .  .  .  The 
'  goal '  to  which  Mr.  Clodd  leads  us  in  so  masterly  a  fashion  is  but  the  start- 
ing point  of  fresh  achievements,  and,  in  due  course,  fresh  theories.  His 
book  furnishes  an  important  contribution  to  a  liberal  education." — London 
Daily  Chronicle. 

"  We  are  always  glad  to  meet  Mr.  Clodd.  He  is  never  dull ;  he  is  always 
well  informed,  and  he  says  what  he  has  to  say  with  clearness  and  precision. 
.  .  .  The  interest  intensifies  as  Mr.  Clodd  attempts  to  show  the  part  really 
played  in  the  growth  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  by  men  like  Wallace,  Dar- 
win, Huxley,  and  Spencer.  .  .  .  We  commend  the  book  to  those  who  want 
to  know  what  evolution  really  means. " — London  Times. 

"This  is  a  book  which  was  needed.  .  .  .  Altogether,  the  book  could 
hardly  be  better  done.  It  is  luminous,  lucid,  orderly,  and  temperate.  Above 
all,  it  is  entirely  free  from  personal  partisanship.  Each  chief  actor  is  sym- 
pathetically treated,  and  friendship  is  seldom  or  never  allowed  to  overweight 
sound  judgment." — London  Academy. 

"  We  can  assure  the  reader  that  he  will  find  in  this  work  a  very  useful  guide 
to  the  lives  and  labors  of  leading  evolutionists  of  the  past  and  present. 
Especially  serviceable  is  the  account  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  and  his  share  in 
rediscovering  evolution,  and  illustrating  its  relations  to  the  whole  field  of 
human  knowledge.  His  forcible  style  and  wealth  of  metaphor  make  all  that 
Mr.  Clodd  writes  arrestive  and  interesting." — London  Literary  World. 

"  Can  not  but  prove  welcome  to  fair-minded  men.  ...  To  read  it  is  to 
have  cm  object-lesson  in  the  meaning  of  evolution.  .  .  .  There  is  no  better 
book  on  the  subject  for  the  general  reader.  .  .  .  No  one  could  go  through 
the  book  without  being  both  refreshed  and  newly  instructed  by  its  masterly 
survey  of  the  growth  of  the  most  powerful  idea  of  modem  times." — The 
Scotsman. 


D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY,  NEW  YORK. 


TJKIVEHSITY 


CALlFOg 


r 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 

'HE  SYNTHETIC  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HER^ 

BERT  SPENCER.      In  ten  volumes.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $2.00 
per  volume.     The  titles  of  the  several  volumes  are  as  follows  i 

(i.)  FIRST  PRINCIPLES. 

I.  The  Unknowable.  II.  Laws  of  the  Knowable. 

(2.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  BIOLOGY.    Vol.  I. 

I.  The  Data  of  Biology.  II.  The  Inductions  of  Biology. 

III.  The  Evolution  of  Life. 

<3.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  BIOLOGY.      Vol.  II. 

IV.  Morphological  Development.  V.  Physiological  Development. 

VI.  Laws  of  Multiplication, 
(4.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  PSYCHOLOGY.    Vol.  I. 

I.  The  Data  of  Psychology.  III.  General  Synthesis. 

II.  The  Inductions  of  Psychology.  IV.  Special  Synthesis. 

V.  Physical  Synthesis. 
(S.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  PSYCHOLOGY.     Vol.  11. 

VI.  Special  Analysis.  VIII.  Congruities. 

VII.  General  Analysis.  IX.  Corollaries. 

(6.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  SOCIOLOGY.     Vol.  I. 

I.  The  Data  of  Sociology.  II.  The  Inductions  of  Sociology. 

III.  The  Domestic  Relations. 
(7.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  SOCIOLOGY.     Vol.  II. 

IV.  Ceremonial  Institutions.  V.   Political  Institutions. 

(8.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  SOCIOLOGY.     Vol.  III. 

VI.  Ecclesinstical  Institutions.  .  ^^^'  Professional  Institutions. 

VIII.  Industrial  Institutions. 
(9.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  ETHICS.     Vol.  I. 

I.  The  Data  of  Ethics.  II.  The  Inductions  of  Ethics. 

III.  The  Ethics  of  Individual  Life. 
(10.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  ETHICS.     Vol.  II. 
IV.  The  Ethics  of  Social  Life:   Justice. 
V.  The  Ethics  of  Social  Life :   Negative  Beneficence. 
VI.  The  Ethics  of  Social  Life:   Positive  Beneficence. 

r\ESCRIPTIVE    SOCIOLOGY.     A    Cyclopcedia    of 

-^--^   Social  Facts.     Representing  the  Constitution   of  Every  Type 

and  Grade  of  Human  Soc.'ety,  Past  and  Present,  Stationary  and 

Progressive.    By  Herbert  Spencer.    Eight  Nos.,  Royal  Folio. 

No.        I.  ENGLISH $4  00 

No.       II.  MEXICANS,  CENTRAL  AMERICANS,  CHIBCHAS,  and  PE- 

RUVIANS 4  00 

No.     in.  LOWEST  RACES,  NEGRITO  RACES,  and  MALAYO-POLY- 

NESIAN   RACES 4  00 

No.      IV.  AFRICAN   RACES 4  00 

No.       V.  ASIATIC  RACES 4  00 

No.     VI.  AMERICAN  RACES 4  00 

No.    VII.  HEBREWS  and  PHCENICIANS 4  00 

No.  VIII.  FRENCH  (Double  Number) 7  00 

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D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 


NEW  EDITION  OF  PROF.  HUXLEY'S  ESSAYS. 

COLLECTED  ESSA  YS.  By  Thomas  H.  Huxley. 
New  complete  edition,  with  revisions,  the  Essays  being  grouped 
according  to  general  subject.  In  nine  volumes,  a  new  Intro- 
duction accompanying  each  volume.  i2mo.  Cloth,  $1.25  per 
volume. 

Vol.        I.—METHOD  AND  RESULTS. 

Vol.      II.— DARWINIANA. 

Vol.  III.— science   AND   EDUCATION. 

Vol.  IV.— science   AND   HEBREW  TRADITION. 

Vol.       v.— science   AND  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION. 

Vol.  VI.— HUME. 

Vol.  VII.— MAN'S   PLACE  IN   NATURE. 

Vol.  VIII.— DISCOURSES,  BIOLOGICAL  AND  GEOLOGICAL. 

Vol.  IX.— EVOLUTION  AND  ETHICS,  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS. 

*'  Mr.  Huxley  has  covered  a  vast  variety  of  topics  during  the  last  quarter  of  a 
century.  It  gives  ona  an  agreeable  surprise  to  look  ever  the  tables  of  contents  and 
note  the  immense  territory  which  he  has  explored.  To  read  these  books  carefully 
and  studiously  is  to  become  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  most  advanced  thought 
on  a  large  number  of  topics." — New  York  Herald. 

"  The  series  will  be  a  welcome  one.  There  are  few  writings  on  the  more  abstruse 
problems  of  science  better  adapted  to  reading  by  the  general  public,  and  in  this  form 
tne  books  will  be  well  in  the  reach  of  the  investigator.  .  .  .  The  revisions  are  the  last 
expected  to  be  made  by  the  author,  and  his  introductions  are  none  of  earlier  date 
than  a  few  months  ago  [1893I,  so  they  may  be  considered  his  final  and  most  authorita- 
tive utterances." — Chicago  Times. 

"  It  was  inevitable  that  his  essays  should  be  called  for  in  a  completed  form,  and  they 
will  be  a  source  of  delight  and  profit  to  all  who  read  them.  He  has  always  commanded 
a  hearing,  and  as  a  master  of  the  literary  style  in  writing  scientific  essays  he  is  worthy 
of  a  place  among  the  great  English  essayists  of  the  day.  This  edition  of  his  essays 
will  be  widely  read,  and  gives  his  scientific  work  a  permanent  form." — Boston  Herald. 

"A  man  whose  brilliancy  is  so  constant  as  that  of  Prof.  Huxley  will  always  com- 
mand readers ;  and  the  utterances  which  are  here  collected  are  not  the  least  in  weight 
and  luminous  beauty  of  those  with  which  the  author  has  long  delighted  the  reading 
world." — Philadelphia  Press. 

"The  connected  arrangement  of  the  essays  which  their  reissue  permits  brings  into^ 
fuller  relief  Mr.  Huxley's  masterly  powers  of  exposition.  Sweepnig  the  subject-matter 
clear  of  all  logomachies,  he  lets  the  light  of  common  day  fall  upon  it.  He  shows  that 
the  place  of  hypothesis  in  science,  as  the  starting  point  of  verification  of  the  phenomena 
to  be  explained,  is  but  an  extension  of  the  assumptions  which  underlie  actior.s  in  every- 
day affairs;  and  that  the  method  of  scientific  investigation  is  only  the  method  which 
rules  the  ordinary  business  of  life." — London  Chronicle. 


New  York:   D.  APPLETON    &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue. 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 

piONEERS    OF    SCIENCE    IN    AMERICA. 

Sketches  of  their  Lives  and  Scientific  Work.     Edited  and  re- 
vised by  William  Jay  Youmans,   M.  D.      With  Portraits. 
8vo.    Cloth,  $4.cx). 
Impelled  solely  by  an  enthusiastic  love  of  Nature,  and  neither  asking 
nor  receiving  outside  aid,  these  early  workers  opened  the  way  and  initiated 
the  movement  through  which  American  science  has  reached  its  present  com- 
manding position.     This  book  gives  some  account  of  these  men,  their  early 
struggles,  their  scientific  labors,  and,  whenever  possible,  something  of  their 
personal  characteristics.    This  information,  often  very  difficult  to  obtain,  has 
been  collected  from  a  great  variety  of  sources,  with  the  utmost  care  to  secure 
accuracy.     It  is  presented  in  a  series  of  sketches,  some  fifty  in  all,  each  with 
a  single  exception  accompanied  with  a  well-authenticated  portrait. 

"  Fills  a  place  that  needed  filling,  and  is  likely  to  be  widely  read,"— A^.  Y.  Sun. 

"  It  is  certainly  a  useful  and  convenient  volume,  and  readable  too,  if  we  judge  cor- 
rectly of  the  degree  of  accuracy  of  the  whole  by  critical  examination  of  those  cases 
in  which  our  own  knowledge  enables  us  to  form  an  opinion.  ...  In  general,  it  seems 
to  us  that  the  handy  volume  is  specially  to  be  commended  for  setting  m  just  historical 
perspective  many  of  the  earlier  scientists  who  are  neither  very  generally  nor  very  well 
known." — New  York  Evening  Post. 

"  A  wonderfully  interesting  volume.  Many  a  young  man  will  find  it  fascinating. 
The  compilation  of  the  book  is  a  work  well  done,  well  worth  the  doing." — Philadelphia 
Press. 

"  One  of  the  most  valuable  books  which  we  have  received." — ^  Boston  Advertiser. 

"  A  book  of  no  little  educational  value.  ...  An  extremely  valuable  work  of  refer- 
ence."— Boston  Beacon. 

"  A  valuable  handbook  for  those  whose  work  runs  on  these  same  lines,  and  is  likely 
to  prove  of  lasting  interest  to  those  for  whom  '  les  documents  humain '  are  second  only 
to  history  in  importance — nay,  are  a  vital  part  of  history. "—Boston  Transcript. 

"  A  biographical  history  of  science  in  America,  noteworthy  for  its  completeness  and 
scope.  .  .  .  All  of  the  sketches  are  excellently  prepared  and  unusually  interesting." — 
Chicago  Record. 

"One  of  the  most  valuable  contributions  to  American  literature  recently  made,  .  .  . 
The  pleasing  style  in  which  these  sketches  are  written,  the  plans  taken  to  secure  ac- 
curacy, and  the  information  conveyed,  combine  to  give  them  great  value  and  interest. 
No  better  or  more  inspiring  reading  could  be  placed  m  the  hands  of  an  intelligent  and 
aspiring  young  man." — New  York  Christian  Work. 

"  A  book  whose  interest  and  value  are  not  for  to-day  or  to-morrow,  but  for  indefinite 
time." — Rochester  Herald. 

"  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  reader  of  ordinary  intelligence  who  would  not  be  enter- 
tained by  the  book.  .  .  .  Conciseness,  exactness,  urbanity  of  tone,  and  interestingness 
are  the  four  qualities  which  chiefly  impress  the  reader  of  these  sketches."— Btt^alo 
Express. 

"  Full  of  interesting  and  valuable  matter." — The  Churchman. 


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D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLIQATIONS. 


yNTRODUCTION  TO  THE  STUDY  OF  PHI- 
LOSOPHY. By  William  T.  Harris,  LL.  D.,  United  States 
Commissioner  of  Education.  Compiled  and  arranged  by  Mari- 
etta KiES.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $1.50. 

"  Philosophy  as  presented  by  Dr.  Harris  gives  to  the  student  an  interpretation  and 
explanation  of  the  phases  of  existence  which  render  even  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life  in 
accordance  with  reason ;  and  for  the  higher  or  spiritual  phases  of  life  his  interpreta- 
tions iiave  the  power  of  a  great  illumination.  Many  of  the  students  are  apparently 
awakened  to  an  interest  in  philosophy,  not  only  as  a  subject  to  be  taken  as  a  pre- 
scribed study,  but  also  as  a  subject  of  fruitful  interest  for  future  years  and  as  a  key 
which  unlocks  many  of  the  mysteries  of  other  subjects  pursued  in  a  college  course."— 
From  the  Compiler's  Pre/ace. 

yj  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  PHILOSOPHY  IN  EPITOME, 
■*^  By  Albert  Schwegler.  Translated  from  the  first  edition 
of  the  original  German  by  Julius  H.  Seelye.  Revised  from 
the  ninth  German  edition,  containing  Important  Additions 
and  Modifications,  with  an  Appendix,  continuing  the  History 
in  its  more  Prominent  Lines  of  Development  since  the  Time 
of  Hegel,  by  Benjamin  T.  Smith.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $2.cx). 

"  Schwegler's  History  of  Philosophy  is  found  in  the  hands  of  almost  every  student 
in  the  philosophical  department  of  a  German  University,  and  is  highly  esteemed  for  its 
clearness,  conciseness,  and  comprehensiveness.  The  present  translation  was  under- 
taken with  the  conviction  that  the  work  would  not  lose  its  interest  or  its  value  in  an 
English  dress,  and  with  the  hope  that  it  might  be  of  wider  service  in  such  a  form  to 
students  of  philosophy  here.  It  was  thought  especially  that  a  proper  ti'onslation  of 
this  manual  would  supply  a  want  for  a  suitable  text-book  on  this  branch  of  study,  long 
felt  by  both  teachers  and  students  in  our  American  colleges. " — From  the  Preface. 


B 


lOGRAPHICAL     HISTORY    OF     PIIILOSO- 

PHY,  from  its  Origin  in  Greece  down  to  the  Present  Day. 
By  George  Henry  Levies.  Two  volumes  in  one.  8vo. 
Cloth.  $3.50.     Also  in  2  vols.,  small  8vo.     Cloth,  $4.00. 

"  Philosophy  was  the  great  initiator  of  science.  It  rescued  the  nobler  part  of  man 
from  the  dominion  of  brutish  apathy  and  helpless  ignorance,  nourished  his  mind  with 
mighty  impulses,  exercised  it  in  magnificent  efforts,  gave  him  the  unslaked,  unslakable 
thirst  for  knowledge  which  has  dignified  his  life,  and  enabled  him  to  multiply  tenfold 
his  existence  and  his  happiness.  Having  done  this,  its  part  is  played.  Our  interest 
in  it  now  is  purely  historical.  The  purport  of  this  history  is  to  show  how  and  why  the 
interest  in  philosophy  has  become  purely  historical." — From  the  Introduction. 


New  York :  D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue. 


^N  INITIAL  FINB  OJ  f ^„« JS 

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